WILLIAM R. PERKINS 
LIBRARY 


DUKE UNIVERSITY 


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THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


GEORGE WASHINGTON EDITION 


VOLUME 17 
THE CHRONICLES 
OF AMERICA SERIES 
ALLEN JOHNSON 
EDITOR 
GERHARD R. LOMER 


CHARLES W. JEFFERYS 
ASSISTANT EDITORS 


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THE FIGHT 
FOR A FREE SEA 


A CHRONICLE OF THE 
WAR OF 1812 
BY RALPH D. PAINE 


NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & CO. 
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


1920 


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Vill. 


CONTENTS 


“ON TO CANADA!” 
LOST GROUND REGAINED 
PERRY AND LAKE ERIE 


EBB AND FLOW ON THE NORTHERN 
FRONT 


THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 


MATCHLESS FRIGATES AND THEIR 
DUELS 


“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 
THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ESSEX 
VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN 
PEACE WITH HONOR 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

INDEX 


“e 


108 


227 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


“OLD IRONSIDES” 


The old frigate Constitution as she appears 
today in her snug berth at the Boston Navy 
Yard where she is preserved as an historical 
relic. Photograph by N. L. Stebbins, Boston. 


THE THEATER OF OPERATIONS IN THE 
WAR OF 1812 
Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographi- 
cal Society. 


OLIVER HAZARD PERRY AT THE BATTLE 
OF LAKE ERIE 


Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, 

New York, owned by the Corporation. Re- 

produced by courtesy of the Municipal Art 

Commission of the City of New York. 
ISAAC CHAUNCEY 


Painting in the Comptroller’s Office, City 
Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation. 
Reproduced by courtesy of the Municipal 
_Art Commission of the City of New York. 


COMMODORE STEPHEN DECATUR 


Painting by Thomas Sully, 1811. In the 
Comptroller’s Office, owned by the City of 
New York. Reproduced by courtesy of the 
Art Commission of the City of New York. 


ix 


Frontispiece 


Facing page 14 


6é ee 92 


x 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


CONSTITUTION AND GUERRI. ERE 


An old print, illustrating the moment in the 
action at which the mainmast of the Guer- 
riére, shattered by the terrific fire of the 
American frigate, fell overside, transforming 
the former vessel into a floating wreck and 
terminating the action. The picture repre- 
sents accurately the surprisingly slight 
damage done the Constitution: note the 
broken spanker gaff and the shot holes in her 


topsails. Facing page 102 


ISAAC HULL 


Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, 
New York, owned by the Corporation. Re- 
produced by courtesy of the Municipal Art 
Commission of the City of New York. 


WILLIAM BAINBRIDGE 


Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, 
New York, owned by the Corporation. Re- 
produced by courtesy of the Municipal Art 
Commission of the City of New York. 


A FRIGATE OF 1812 UNDER SAIL 


The Constellation, of which this is a photo- 
graph, is somewhat smaller than the Con- 
stitution, being rated at 38 guns as against 
44 for the latter. In general appearance, 
however, and particularly in rig, the two 
types are very similar. Although the Con- 
stellation did not herself see action in the 
War of 1812, she'is a good example of the 
heavily armed American frigate of that day 
—and the only one of them still to be seen at 
sea under sail within recent years. At the 
present time the Constellation lies moored at 
the pier of the Naval Training Station, New- 


120 


ILLUSTRATIONS xi 


port, R. I. Photograph copyright by E. 
Muller, Jr., Inc., New York. Facing page 142 


JACOB BROWN 


Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, 

New York, owned by the Corporation. 

Reproduced by courtesy of the Municipal 

Art Commission of the City of New York. 
THOMAS MACDONOUGH 


Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, 
New York, owned by the Corporation. Re- 
produced by courtesy of the Municipal Art 
Commission of the City of New York. “ ‘05788 


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THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


CHAPTER I 


“ON TO CANADA!” 

Tue American people of today, weighed in the bal- 
ances of the greatest armed conflict of all time 
and found not wanting, can afford to survey, in a 
spirit of candid scrutiny and without reviving an 
ancient grudge, that turbulent episode in the weld- 
ing of their nation which is called the War of 1812. 
In spite of defeats and disappointments this war 
was, in the large, enduring sense, a victory. It was 
in this renewed defiance of England that the dream 
of the founders of the Republic and the ideals of 
the embattled farmers of Bunker Hill and Saratoga 
achieved their goal. Henceforth the world was 
to respect these States, not as so many colonies 
bitterly wrangling among themselves, but as a 


sovereign and independent nation. 
1 


2 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


The War of 1812, like the American Revolution, 
was a valiant contest for survival on the part of the 
spirit of freedom. It was essentially akin to the 
world-wide struggle of a century later, when sons of 
the old foemen of 1812 — sons of the painted In- 
dians and of the Kentucky pioneers in fringed 
buckskins, sons of the New Hampshire ploughboys 
clad in homespun, sons of the Canadian militia and 
the red-coated regulars of the British line, sons of 
the tarry seamen of the Constitution and the Guer- 
riére — stood side by side as brothers in arms to 
save from brutal obliteration the same spirit of 
freedom. And so it is that in Flanders fields today 
the poppies blow above the graves of the sons of the 
men who fought each other a century ago in the 
Michigan wilderness and at Lundy’s Lane. 

The causes and the background of the War of 
1812 are presented elsewhere in this series of Chron- 
icles.* Great Britain, at death grips with Napo- 
leon, paid small heed to the rights and dignities of 
neutral nations. The harsh and selfish maritime 
policy of the age, expressed in the British Naviga- 
~‘tion Acts and intensified by the struggle with Napo- 
leon, led the Mistress of the Seas to perpetrate 


tSee Jefferson and His Colleagues, by Allen Johnson (in The 
Chronicles of America). 


“ON TO CANADA!” 3 


indignity after indignity on the ships and sailors 
which were carrying American commerce around 
the world. The United States demanded a free 
sea, which Great Britain would not grant. Of 
necessity, then, such futile weapons as embargoes 
and non-intercourse acts had to give place to the 
musket, the bayonet, and the carronade. There 
could be no compromise between the clash of doc- 


trines. It was for the United States to assert 


ecracninrseonn 


herself, regardless of the odds, or sink into a posi- 
tion of supine dependency upon the will of Great 
Britain and the wooden walls of her invincible navy. 

“Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights!” was the Ameri- 
can warcry. It expressed the two grievances which 
outweighed all others — the interference with Amer- 
ican shipping and the ruthless impressment of sea- 
men from beneath the Stars and Stripes. No less 
high-handed than Great Britain’s were Napoleon’s 
offenses against American commerce, and there was 
just cause for war with France. Yet Americans felt 
the greater enmity toward England, partly as an in- 
heritance from the Revolution, but chiefly because 
of the greater injury which England had wrought, 
owing to her superior strength on the sea. 

There were, to be sure, other motives in the con- 


flict. It isnot to be supposed that the frontiersmen 


4 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


of the Northwest and Southwest, who hailed the 
war with enthusiasm, were ardently aroused to 
redress wrongs inflicted upon their seafaring coun- 
trymen. Their enmity towards Great Britain was 
compounded of quite different grievances. Behind 
the recent Indian wars on the frontier they saw, or 
thought they saw, British paymasters. The red 
trappers and hunters of the forest were bloodily 
defending their lands; and there was a long-stand- 
ing bond of interest between them and the British 
in Canada. The British were known to the tribes 
generally as fur traders, not “land stealers”; and 
the great traffic carried on by the merchants of 
Montreal, not only in the Canadian wilderness but 
also in the American Northwest, naturally drew 
Canadians and Indians into the same camp. “On 
to Canada!” was the slogan of the frontiersmen. It 
expressed at once their desire to punish the hered- 
itary foe and to rid themselves of an unfriendly 
power to the north. \ 

The United States was poorly prepared and 
equipped for military and naval campaigns when, in 
June, 1812, Congress declared war on Great Britain. ~ 
Nothing had been learned from the costly blunders 
of the Revolution, and the delusion that readiness 
for war was a menace to democracy had influenced 


“ON TO CANADA!” 5 


the Government to absurd extremes. The regular 
army comprised onlysixty-seven hundred men, scat- 
tered over an enormous country and on garrison 
service from which they could not be safely with- 
drawn. They were without traditions and without 
experience in actual warfare. Winfield Scott, at 
that time a young officer in the regular army, wrote: 


The old officers had very generally sunk into either 
sloth, ignorance, or habits of intemperate drinking. 
... Many of the appointments were positively bad, 
and a majority of the remainder indifferent. Party 
spirit of that day knew no bounds, and was of course 
blind to policy. Federalists were almost entirely ex- 
cluded from selection, though great numbers were eager 
for the field. . . . Where there was no lack of edu- 
cated men in the dominant party, the appointments 
consisted generally of swaggerers, dependents, de- 
cayed gentlemen, and others “fit for nothing else,” 
which always turned out utterly unfit for any military 
purpose whatever. 


The main reliance was to be on militia and volun- 
teers, an army of the free people rushing to arms in 
defense of their liberties, as voiced by Jefferson and 
echoed more than a century later by another spokes- 
man of democracy. There was the stuff for splen- 
did soldiers in these farmers and woodsmen, but 
in many lamentable instances their regiments were 


6 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


no more than irresponsible armed mobs. Until as 
recently as the War with Spain, the perilous fallacy 
persisted that the States should retain control of 
their several militia forces in time of war and deny 
final authority to the Federal Government. It 
was this doctrine which so nearly wrecked the 
cause of the Revolution. George Washington had 
learned the lesson through painful experience, 
but his counsel was wholly disregarded; and, be- 
cause it serves as a text and an interpretation for 
much of the humiliating history which we are 
about to follow, that counsel is here quoted in part. 
Washington wrote in retrospect: 


Had we formed a permanent army in the beginning. 
which by the continuance of the same men in service 
had been capable of discipline, we never should have 
had to retreat with a handful of men across the 
Delaware in 1776, trembling for the fate of America, 
which nothing but the infatuation of the enemy could 
have saved; we should not have remained all the suc- 
ceeding winter at their mercy, with sometimes scarcely — 
a sufficient body of men to mount the ordinary guards, 
liable at every moment to be dissipated if they had 
only thought proper to march against us; we should 
not have been under the necessity of fighting Brandy- 
wine with an unequal number of raw troops, and after- 
wards of seeing Philadelphia fall a prey to a victorious 
army; we should not have been at Valley Forge with 


“ON TO CAYADAI? 9 


less than half the force of the enemy, destitute of every- 
thing, in a situation neither to resist or to retire; we 
should not have seen New York left with a handful of 
men, yet an overmatch for the main army of these 
States, while the principal part of their force was de- 
tached for the reduction of two of them; we should not 
have found ourselves this spring so weak as to be in- 
sulted by 5000 men, unable to protect our baggage and 
magazines, their security depending on a good counte- 
nance and a want of enterprise in the enemy; we should 
not have been, the greatest part of the war, inferior to 
the enemy, indebted for our safety to their inactivity, 
enduring frequently the mortification of seeing invit- 
ing opportunities to ruin them pass unimproved for 
want of a force which the country was completely able 
to afford, and of seeing the country ravaged, our towns 
burnt, the inhabitants plundered, abused, murdered, 
with impunity from the same cause. 


The War of 1812, besides being hampered by 
short enlistments, confused authority, and incom- 
petent officers, was fought by a country and an 
army divided against itself. When Congress au- 
thorized the enrollment of one hundred thousand 
militia, the governors of Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut refused to furnish their quotas, objecting 
to the command of United States officers and to 
the sending of men beyond the borders of their own 
States. This attitude fairly indicated the feeling 
of New England, which was opposed to the war and 


6. ..THE FIGHT Jon A FREE SEA 


openly spoke of secession. Moreover, the wealthy — 
merchants and bankers of New England declined 
to subscribe to the national loans when the Treas- 
ury at Washington was bankrupt, and vast quanti- 
ties of supplies were shipped from New England 
seaports to the enemy in Canada. It was an ex- 
traordinary paradox that those States which had 
seen their sailors impressed by thousands and 
which had suffered most heavily from England’s 
attacks on neutral commerce should have arrayed 
themselves in bitter opposition to the cause and 
the Government. It was “Mr. Madison’s War,” 
they said, and he could win or lose it — and pay 
the bills, for that matter. 

The American navy was in little better plight 
thanthearmy. England flew the royal ensign over 
six hundred ships of war and was the undisputed 


_ sovereign of the seas. Opposed to this mighty 


armada were five frigates, three ships, and seven 
brigs, which Monroe recommended should be “kept 
in a body ina safe port.” Not worth mention were 
the two hundred ridiculous little gunboats which 
had to stow the one cannon below to prevent cap- 
sizing when they ‘ventured out of harbor. These 
craft were a pet notion of Jefferson. “Believing, 
myself,” he said of them, “that gunboats are the 


“ON TO CANADA!” 9 


only water defense which can be useful to us and 
protect us from the ruinous folly of a navy, I 
am pleased with everything which promises to 
improve them.” 

A nation of eight million people, unready, blun- 
dering, rent by internal dissension, had resolved to 
challenge an England hardened by war and tre- 
mendously superior in military resources. It was 
not all madness, however, for the vast empire of 
Canada lay exposed to invasion, and in this quarter 
the enemy was singularly vulnerable. Henry Clay 

-spoke for most of his countrymen beyond the 
boundaries of New England when he announced to 


Congress: “The conquest of Canada is in your -: 


power. I trust that I shall not be deemed pre- 
sumptuous when I state that I verily believe that 
the militia of Kentucky are alone competent to 
place Montreal and Upper Canada at your feet. 
Is it nothing to the British nation; is it nothing to 
the pride of her monarch to have the last immense 
North American possession held by him in the com- 
mencement of his reign wrested from his domin- 
ions?” Even Jefferson was deluded into predict- 
ing that the capture of Canada as far as Quebec 
would be a mere matter of marching through the 
country and would give the troops experience for 


10 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


the attack on Halifax and the final expulsion of 
England from the American continent. 

The British Provinces, extending twelve hun- 
dred miles westward to Lake Superior, had a popu- 
lation of less than five hundred thousand; but a 
third of these were English immigrants or American 
Loyalists and their descendants, types of folk who 
would hardly sit idly and await invasion. ‘That 
they should resist or strike back seems not to have 
been expected in the war councils of the amiable Mr. 
Madison. Nor were other and manifold dangers 
taken into account by those who counseled war. 
The Great Lakes were defenseless, the warlike In- 
dians of the Northwest were in arms and awaiting 
the British summons, while the whole country be- 
yond the Wabash and the Maumee was almost un- 
guarded. Isolated here and there were stockades 
containing a few dozen men beyond hope of rescue, 
frontier posts of what is now the Middle West. 
Plans of campaign were prepared without thought 
of the insuperable difficulties of transport through 
regions in which there were neither roads, provi- 
sions, towns, nor navigable rivers. Armies were 
maneuvered and victories won upon the maps in 
the office of the Secretary of War. Generals were 
selected by some inscrutable process which decreed 


“ON TO CANADA!” 11 


that dull-witted, pompous incapables should bungle 
campaigns and waste lives. 

It was wisely agreed that of all the strategic 
points along this far-flung and thinly held frontier, 
Detroit should receive the earliest attention. At 
all costs this point was to be safeguarded as a base 
for the advance into Canada from the west. A 
remote trading post within gunshot of the enemy 
across the river and menaced by tribes of hostile 
Indians, Detroit then numbered eight hundred in- 
habitants and was protected only by a stout en- 
closure of logs. For two hundred miles to the 
nearest friendly settlements in Ohio, the line of 
communications was a forest trail which skirted 
Lake Erie for some distance and could easily be cut 
by the enemy. From Detroit it was the intention 
of the Americans to strike the first blow at the 
Canadian post of Amherstburg near by. 

The stage was now set for the entrance of General 
William Hull as one of the luckless, unheroic 
figures upon whom the presidential power of ap- 
pointment bestowed the trappings of high military 
command. He was'by no means the worst of 
these. In fact, the choice seemed auspicious. 
Hull had seen honorable service in the Revolution 
and had won the esteem of George Washington. 


12 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


He was now Governor of Michigan Territory. At 
sixty years of age he had no desire to gird on the 
sword. He was persuaded by Madison, however, 
_ to accept a brigadier general’s commission and to 
lead the force ordered to Detroit. His instruc- 
tions were vague, but in June, 1812, shortly before 
the declaration of war, he took command of two 
thousand regulars and militia at Dayton, Ohio, and 
began the arduous advance through the wilderness 
towards Detroit. The adventure was launched 
with energy. These hardy, reliant men knew how 
to cut roads, to bridge streams, and to exist on 
scanty rations. Until sickness began to decimate 
their ranks, they advanced at an encouraging rate 
and were almost halfway to Detroit when the tid- 
ings of the outbreak of hostilities overtook them. 
General Hull forthwith hurried his troops to the 
Maumee River, leaving their camp equipment and 
heavy stores behind. He now committed his first 
crass blunder. Though the British controlled the 
waters of Lake Erie, yet he sent a schooner ahead 
with all his hospital supplies, intrenching tools, 
official papers, and muster rolls. The little vessel 
was captured within sight of Detroit and the docu- 
ments proved invaluable to the British commander 
of Upper Canada, Major General Isaac Brock, who 


“ON TO CANADA!” 13 


gained thereby a complete idea of the American 
plans and proceeded to act accordingly. Broc 

was a soldier of uncommon intelligence and resolu- 
tion, acquitting himself with distinction, and con- t: 
trasting with his American adversaries ina manner ~ 
rather painful to contemplate. 

At length Hull reached Detroit and crossed the 
river to assume the offensive. He was strongly 
hopeful of success. The Canadians appeared 
friendly and several hundred sought his protection. 
Even the enemy’s militia were deserting to his 
colors. In a proclamation Hull looked forward to 
a bloodless conquest, informing the Canadians that 
they were to be emancipated from tyranny and op- 
pression and restored to the dignified station of 
freemen. “I have a force which will break down 
all opposition,’ said he, “‘and that force is but the 
vanguard of a much greater.” 

He soundly reasoned that unless a movement 
could be launched against Niagara, at the other 
end of Lake Erie, the whole strength of the British 
might be thrown against him and that he was likely 
to be trapped in Detroit. There was a general plan 
of campaign, submitted by Major General Henry 
Dearborn before the war began, which provided for 
a threefold invasion — from Sackett’s Harbor on 


14 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Lake Ontario, from Niagara, and from Detroit — 
in support of a grand attack along the route leading 
past Lake Champlain to Montreal. Theoretically, 
it was good enough strategy, but no attempt had 
been made to prepare the execution, and there was 
no leader competent to direct it. 

In response to Hull’s urgent appeal, Dearborn, 
who was puttering about between Boston and AlI- 
bany, confessed that he knew nothing about what 
was going on at Niagara. He ranked as the com- 
mander-in-chief of the American forces and he 
awoke from his habitual stupor to ask himself this 
amazing question: “‘ Who is to have the command 
of the operations in Upper Canada? I take it for 
granted that my command does not extend to that 
distant quarter.”” If Dearborn did not know who 
was in control of the operations at Niagara, it was 
safe to say that nobody else did, and Hull was left 
to deal with the increasing forces in front of him 
and the hordes of Indians in the rear, to garrison 
Detroit, to assault the fort at Amherstburg, to 
overcome the British naval forces on Lake Erie — 
and all without the slightest help or codperation 
from his Government. 

Meanwhile Brock had ascertained that the 
American force at Niagara consisted of a few 


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“ON TO CANADA!” 15 


hundred militia with no responsible officer in com- 
mand, who were making a pretense of patrolling 
thirty-six miles of frontier. They were undisci- 
plined, ragged, without tents, shoes, money, or 
munitions, and ready to fall back if attacked or 
to go home unless soon relieved. Having nothing 
to fear in that quarter, Brock gathered up a small 
body of regulars as he marched and proceeded to 
Amherstburg to finish the business of the unfor- 
tunate Hull. 

That Hull deserves some pity as well as the dis- 
grace which overwhelmed him is quite apparent. 
Most of his troops were ill-equipped, unreliable, and 
insubordinate. Even during the march to Detroit 
he had to use a regular regiment to compel the obedi- 
ence of twelve hundred mutinous militiamen who 
refused to advance. Their own officer could do 
nothing with them. At Detroit two hundred of 
them refused to cross the river, on the ground that 
they were not obliged to serve outside the United 
States. Granted such extenuation as this, how- 
ever, Hull showed himself so weak and contempti- 
ble in the face of danger that he could not expect 
his fighting men to maintain any respect for him. 

His fatal flaw was lack of courage and prompti- 
tude. He did not know how to play a poor hand 


16 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


well. In the emergency which confronted him he 
was like a dull sword in a rusty scabbard. While © 
the enemy waited for reinforcements, he might 
have captured Amherstburg. He had the superior 
force, and yet he delayed and lost heart while his 
regiments dwindled because of sickness and deser- 
tion and jeered at his leadership. The watchful 
Indians, led by the renowned Tecumseh, learned 
to despise the Americans instead of fearing them, 
and were eager to take the warpath against so easy 
a prey. Already other bands of braves were has- 
tening from Lake Huron and from Mackinac, 
whose American garrison had been wiped out. 
Brooding and shaken, like an old man utterly 
undone, Hull abandoned his pretentious invasion 
of Canada and retreated across the river to shelter 
his troops behind the log barricades of Detroit. He 
sent six hundred men to try to open a line to Ohio, 
but, after a sharp encounter with a British force, 
Hull was obliged to admit that they “could only 
open communication as far as the points of their 
bayonets extended.” His only thought was to ex- 
tricate himself, not to stand and fight a winning 
battle without counting the cost. His officers felt 
only contempt for his cowardice. ‘They were con- 
vinced that the tide could be turned in their favor. 


“ON TO CANADA!” 17 


There were steadfast men in the ranks who were 
eager to take the measure of the redcoats. The 
colonels were in open mutiny and, determined to 
set General Hull aside, they offered the command 
to Colonel Miller of the regulars, who declined to 
accept it. When Hull proposed a general retreat, 
he was informed that every man of the Ohio militia 
would refuse to obey the order. These troops who 
had been so fickle and jealous of their rights were 
unwilling to share the leader’s disgrace. 

Two days after his arrival at Amherstburg, 
General Brock sent to the Americans a summons 
to surrender, adding with a crafty discernment of 
the effect of the threat upon the mind of the man 
with whom he was dealing: “You must be aware 
that the numerous body of Indians who have at- 
tached themselves to my troops will be beyond my 
control the moment the contest commences.” Hull 
could see only the horrid picture of a massacre of 
the women and children within the stockades of 
Detroit. He failed to realize that his thousand 
effective infantrymen could hold out for weeks 
behind those log ramparts against Brock’s few 
hundred regulars and volunteers. Two and a half 
years later, Andrew Jackson and his militia em- 
blazoned a very different story behind the cypress 


18 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


breastworks of New Orleans. Besides the thou- 
sand men in the fort, Hull had detached five hun- 
dred under Colonels McArthur and Cass to at- 
tempt to break through the Indian cordon in his 
rear and obtain supplies. These he now vainly 
endeavored to recall while he delayed a final reply 
to Brock’s mandate. 

Indecision had doomed the garrison which was 
now besieged. ‘Tecumseh’s warriors had crossed 
theriver and were between the fort and McArthur’s 
column. Brock boldly decided to assault, a desper- 
ate venture, but he must have known that Hull’s 
will had crumbled. No more than seven hundred 
strong, the little British force crossed the river just 
before daybreak on the 16th of August and was 
permitted to select its positions without the slight- 
est molestation. A few small field pieces, posted 
on the Canadian side of the river, hurled shot into 
the fort, killing four of Hull’s men, and two British 
armed schooners lay within range. ; 

Brock advanced, expecting to suffer large losses 
from the heavy guns which were posted to cover the 
main approach to the fort, but his men passed 
through the zone of danger and found cover in 
which they made ready to storm the defenses of 
Detroit. As Brock himself walked forward totake . 


“ON TO CANADA!” 19 


note of the situation before giving the final com- 
mands, a white flag fluttered from the battery in 
front of him. Without firing a shot, Hull had sur- 
rendered Detroit and with it the great territory of 
Michigan, the most grievous loss of domain that the 
United States has ever suffered in war or peace. On 
the same day Fort Dearborn (Chicago), which had 
been forgotten by the Government, was burned by 
Indians after all its defenders had been slain. These 
two disasters with the earlier fall of Mackinac 
practically erased American dominion from the 
western empire of the Great Lakes. Visions of the 
conquest of Canada were thus rudely dimmed in 
the opening actions of the war. 

General Hull was tried by court-martial on 
charges of treason, cowardice, and neglect of duty. 
He was convicted on the last two charges and sen- 
tenced to be shot, with a recommendation to the 
mercy of the President. The verdict was approved 
by Madison, but he remitted the execution of the 
sentence because of the old man’s services in the 
Revolution. Guilty though he was, an angry and 
humiliated people also made him the scapegoat for 
the sins of neglect and omission of which their Gov- 
ernment stood convicted. In the testimony offered 
at his trial there was a touch, rude, vivid, and very 


20 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


human, to portray him in the final hours of the 
tragic episode at Detroit. Spurned by his officers, 
he sat on the ground with his back against the ram- 
part while “he apparently unconsciously filled his 
mouth with tobacco, putting in quid after quid 
more than he generally did; the spittle colored with 
tobacco juice ran from his mouth on his neckcloth, 
beard, cravat, and vest.” 

Later events in the Northwest Territory showed 
that the British successes in that region were gained 
chiefly because of an unworthy alliance with the 
Indian tribes, whose barbarous methods of war- 
fare stained the records of those who employed 
them. “Not more than seven or eight hundred 
British soldiers ever crossed the Detroit River,” 
says Henry Adams, “‘but the United States raised 
fully twenty thousand men and spent at least five 
million dollars and many lives in expelling them. 
The Indians alone made this outlay necessary. 
The campaign of Tippecanoe, the surrender of 
Detroit and Mackinaw, the massacres at Fort 
Dearborn, the river Raisin, and Fort Meigs, the 
murders along the frontier, and the campaign of 
1813 were the prices paid for the Indian lands in 
the Wabash Valley.” 

Before the story shifts to the other fields of the 


“ON TO CANADA!” 21 


war, it seems logical to follow to its finally success- 
ful result the bloody, wasteful struggle for the re- 
covery of the lost territory. This operation re- 
quired large armies and long campaigns, together 
with the naval supremacy of Lake Erie, won in the 
next year by Oliver Hazard Perry, before the fugi- 
tive British forces fell back from the charred ruins 
of Detroit and Amherstburg and were soundly 
beaten at the battle of the Thames — the one deci- 
sive, clean-cut American victory of the war on the 
Canadian frontier. These events showed that far 
too much had been expected of General William 
Hull, who comprehended his difficulties but made 
no attempt to batter a way through them, forget- 
ting that to die and win is always better than to 
live and fail. 


CHAPTER II 
LOST GROUND REGAINED 


GENERAL Witit1amM Henry Harrison, the hero of 
Tippecanoe and the Governor of Indiana Terri- 
tory, whose capital was at Vincennes on the Wa- 
bash, possessed the experience and the instincts 
of a soldier. He had foreseen that Hull, un- 
less he received support, must either abandon 
Detroit or be hopelessly hemmed in. The task 
of defending the western border was ardently un- 
dertaken by the States of Kentucky and Ohio. 
They believed in the war and were ready to aid it 
with the men and resources of a vigorous popula- 
tion of almost a million. When the word came 
that Hull was in desperate straits, Harrison has- 
tened to organize a relief expedition. Before he 
could move, Detroit had fallen. But a high tide 
of enthusiasm swept him on toward an attempt 
to recover the lost empire. The Federal Govern- 


ment approved his plans and commissioned him 
99 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 23 


as commander of the Northwestern army of ten 
thousand men. 

In the early autumn of 1812, General Harrison 
launched his ambitious and imposing campaign, by 
which three separate bodies of troops were to ad- 
vance and converge within striking distance of De- 
troit, while a fourth was to invade and destroy the 
nests of Indians on the Wabash and Illinois rivers. 
An active British force might have attacked and 
defeated these isolated columns one by one, for 
they were beyond supporting distance of each other; 
but Brock now needed his regulars for the defense 
of the Niagara frontier. The scattered American 
army, including brigades from Virginia and Penn- 
sylvania, was too strong to be checked by Indian 
forays, but it had not reckoned with the obstacles 
of an unfriendly wilderness and climate. In Octo- 
ber, no more than a month after the bugles had 
sounded the advance, the campaign was halted, 
demoralized and darkly uncertain. A vast swamp 
stretched as a barrier across the route and heavy 
rains made it impassable. 

Hull had crossed the same swamp with his small 
force in the favorable summer season, but Harri- 
son was unable to transport the food and war ma- 


terial needed by his ten thousand men. A million 


24 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


rations were required at the goal of the Maumee 
Rapids, and yet after two months of heartbreak- 
ing endeavor not a pound of provisions had been 
carried within fifty miles of this place. Wagons 
and pack-trains floundered in the mud and were 
abandoned. The rivers froze and thwarted the 
use of flotillas of scows. Winter closed down, and 
the American army was forlornly mired and block- 
aded along two hundred miles of front. The troops 
at Fort Defiance ate roots and bark. Typhus 
broke out among them, and they died like flies. For 
the failure to supply the army, the War Depart- 
ment was largely responsible, and Secretary Eus- 
tis very properly resigned in December. This re- 
moved one glaring incompetent from the list but it 
failed to improve Harrison’s situation. 

It was not until the severe frosts of January, 
1813, fettered the swamps that Harrison was able 
to extricate his troops and forward supplies to the 
shore of Lake Erie for an Offensive against Am- 
herstburg. First in motion was the left wing of 
thirteen hundred Kentucky militia and regulars 
under General Winchester. This officer was an 
elderly planter who, like Hull, had worn a uniform 
in the Revolution. He had no great aptitude for 
war and was held in low esteem by the Kentuckians 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 25 


of his command — hungry, mutinous, and disgusted 
men, who were counting the days before their en- 
listments should expire. The commonplace Win- 
chester was no leader to hold them in hand and 
spur their jaded determination. 

While they were building storehouses and log 
defenses, within dangerously easy distance of the 
British post at Amherstburg, the tempting mes- 
sage came that the settlement of Frenchtown, on 
the Raisin, thirty miles away ‘and within the Brit- 
ish lines, was held by only two companies of Cana- 
dian militia. Here was an opportunity for a dash- 
ing adventure, and Winchester ordered half his 
total force to march and destroy this detachment of 
theenemy. The troops accordingly set out, drove 
home a brisk assault, cleared Frenchtown of its 
defenders, and held their ground awaiting orders. 

Winchester then realized that he had leaped be- 
fore he looked. He had seriously weakened his 
own force while the column at Frenchtown was in 
peril from two thousand hostile troops and Indians 
only eighteen miles beyond the river Raisin. The 
Kentuckians left with him decided matters for 
themselves. They insisted on marching to the 
support of their comrades at Frenchtown. Mean- 
while General Harrison had learned of this fatuous 


26 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


division of strength and was hastening to the base 
at the falls of the Maumee. There he found only 
three hundred men. All the others had gone with 
Winchester to reinforce the men at Frenchtown. 
It was too late to summon troops from other points, 
and Harrison waited with forebodings of disaster. 

News reached him after two days. The Ameri- 
cans at the Raisin had suffered not only a defeat 
but a massacre. Nearly four hundred were killed 
in battle or in flight. Those who survived were 
prisoners. No more than thirty had escaped of a 
force one thousand strong. . The enemy had won 
this extraordinary success with five hundred white 
troops and about the same number of Indians, led 
by Colonel Procter, whom Brock had placed in 
command of the fort at Amherstburg. Procter’s 
name is infamous in the annals of the war. The 
worst traditions of Indian atrocity, uncontrolled 
and even encouraged, cluster about his memory. 
He was later promoted in rank instead of being de- 
graded, a costly blunder which England came to 
regret and at last redeemed. A notoriously in- 
competent officer, on this one occasion of the battle 
of the Raisin he acted with decision and took 
advantage of the American blunder. 

The conduct of General Winchester after his 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 27 


arrival at Frenchtown is inexplicable. He did 
nothing to prepare his force for action even on 
learning that the British were advancing from 
Amherstburg. A report of the disaster, after re- 
cording that no patrols or pickets were ordered 
out during the night, goes on: 


The troops were permitted to select, each for him- 
self, such quarters on the west side of the river as 
might please him best, whilst the general took his 
quarters on the east side — not the least regard being 
paid to defense, order, regularity, or system in the 
posting of the different corps. ... Destitute of 
artillery, or engineers, of men who had ever heard or 
seen the least of an enemy; and with but a very inade- 
quate supply of ammunition — how he ever could have 
entertained the most distant hope of success, or what 
right he had to presume to claim it, is to me one of the 
strangest things in the world. 


At dawn, on the 21st of January, the British and 
Indians, having crossed the frozen Detroit River 
the day before, formed within musket shot of the 
American lines and opened the attack with a bat- 
tery of three-pounders. They might have rushed 
the camp with bayonet and tomahawk and killed 
most of the defenders asleep, but the cannonade 
alarmed the Kentuckians and they took cover 
behind a picket fence, using their long rifles so 


28 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


expertly that they killed or wounded a hundred and 
eighty-five of the British regulars, who thereupon 
had to abandon their artillery. Meanwhile, the 
American regular force, caught on open ground, 
was flanked and driven toward the river, carrying 
a militia regiment with it. Panic spread among 
these unfortunate men and they fled through the 
deep snow, Winchester among them, while six 
hundred whooping Indians slew and scalped them 
without mercy as they ran. 

But behind the picket fence the Kentuckians 
still squinted along the barrels of their rifles and 
hammered home more bullets and patches. Three 
hundred and eighty-four of them, they showed a 
spirit that made their conduct the bright, heroic 
episode of that black day. Forgotten are their 
mutinies, their profane disregard of the Articles of 
War, their jeers at generals-and such. They fin- 
ished in style and covered the multitude of their 
sins. Unclothed, unfed, uncared for, dirty, and 
wretched, they proved themselves worthy to be 
called American soldiers. ‘They fought until there 
was no more ammunition, until they were sur- 
rounded by a thousand of the enemy, and then 
they honorably surrendered. 

The brutal Procter, aware that the Indians would 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 29 


commit hideous outrages if left unrestrained, nev- 
ertheless returned to Amherstburg with his troops 
and his prisoners, leaving the American wounded 
to their fate. That night the savages came back 
to Frenchtown and massacred those hurt and 
helpless men, thirty in number. 

This unhappy incident of the campaign, not so 
much a battle as a catastrophe, delayed Harrison’s 
operations. His failures had shaken popular con- 
fidence, and at the end of this dismal winter, after 
six months of disappointments in which ten thou- 
sand men had accomplished nothing, he was com- 
pelled to report to the Secretary of War: 


Amongst the reasons which make it necessary to 
employ a large force, I am sorry to mention the dismay 
and disinclination to the service which appears to pre- 
vail in the western country; numbers must give that 
confidence which ought to be produced by conscious 
valor and intrepidity, which never existed in any army 
in a superior degree than amongst the greater part of 
the militia which were with me through the winter. 
The new drafts from this State [Ohio] are entirely of 
another character and are not to be depended upon. 
I have no doubt, however, that a sufficient number of 
good men can be procured, and should they be allowed 
to serve on horseback, Kentucky would furnish some 
regiments that would not be inferior to those that 
fought at the river Raisin; and these were, in my 


30 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


opinion, superior to any militia that ever took the 
field in modern times. 


There was to be no immediate renewal of action 
between Procter and Harrison. Each seemed to 
have conceived so much respect for the forces of the 
other that they proceeded to increase the distance 
between them as rapidly as possible. Fearing to 
be overtaken and greatly outnumbered, the Brit- 
ish leader retreated to Canada while the American 
leader was in a state of mind no less uneasy. Har- 
rison promptly set fire to his storehouses and sup- 
plies at the Maumee Rapids, his advanced base 
near Lake Erie. Thus all this labor and exertion 
and expense vanished in smoke while, in the set 
diction of war, he retired some fifteen miles. In 
such a vast hurry were the adversaries to be quit of 
each other that a day and a half after the fight at | 
Frenchtown they were sixty miles apart. Harri- 
son remained a fortnight on this back trail and 
collected two thousand of his troops, with whom he 
returned to the ruins of his foremost post and 
undertook the task all over again. 

The defensive works which he now built were 
called Fort Meigs. For the time there was no 
more talk of invading Canada. The service of the 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 31 


Kentucky and Ohio militia was expiring, and these 
seasoned regiments were melting away like snow. 
Presently Fort Meigs was left with no more than 
five hundred war-worn men to hold out against 
British operations afloat and ashore. Luckily Proc- 
ter had expended his energies at Frenchtown and 
seemed inclined to repose, for he made no effort 
to attack the few weak garrisons which guard- 
ed the American territory near at hand. From 
January until April he neglected his opportunities 
while more American militia marched homeward, 
while Harrison was absent, while Fort Meigs was 
unfinished. 

At length the British offensive was organized, 
and a thousand white soldiers and as many In- 
dians, led by Tecumseh, sallied out of Amherstburg 
with a naval force of two gunboats. Heavy guns 
were dragged from Detroit to batter down the log 
walls, for it was the intention to surround and be- 
siege Fort Meigs in the manner taught by the mili- 
tary science of Europe. Meanwhile Harrison had 
come back from a recruiting mission; and a new 
brigade of Kentucky militia, twelve hundred strong, 
under Brigadier General Green Clay, was to follow 
in boats down the Auglaize and Maumee rivers. 
Procter’s guns were already pounding the walls of 


32 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Fort Meigs on the 5th of May when eight hundred 
troops of this fresh American force arrived within 
striking distance. They dashed upon the British 
batteries and took them with the bayonet in a 
wild, impetuous charge. It was then their business 
promptly to reform and protect themselves, but 
through lack of training they failed to obey orders 
and were off hunting the enemy, every man for 
himself. In the meantime three companies of Brit- 
ish regulars and some volunteers took advantage 
of the confusion, summoned the Indians, and let 
loose a vicious counter-attack. 

Within sight of General Harrisowand the garrison 
of Fort Meigs, these bold Kentuckians were pres- 
ently driven from the captured guns, scattered, and 
shot down or taken prisoner. Only a hundred and 
seventy of them got away, and they lost even their 
boats and supplies. The British loss was no more 
than fifty in killed and wounded. Again Procter 
inflamed the hatred and contempt of his Ameri- 
can foes because forty of his prisoners were toma- 
hawked while guarded by British soldiers. He 
made no effort to save them and it was the inter- 
vention of Tecumseh, the Indian leader, which 
averted the massacre of the whole body of five 
hundred prisoners. 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 33 


Across the river, Colonel John Miller, of the 
American regular infantry, had attempted a gal- 
lant sortie from the fort and had taken a battery 
but this sally had no great effect on the issue of the 
engagement. Harrison had lost almost a thousand 
men, half his fighting force, and was again shut 
up within the barricades and blockhouses of Fort 
Meigs. Procter continued the siege only four days 
longer, for his Indian allies then grew tired of it 
and faded into the forest. He was not reluctant 
to accept this excuse for withdrawing. His own 
militia were drifting away, his regulars were suffer- 
ing from illness and exposure, and Fort Meigs it- 
self was a harder nut to crack than he had antici- 
pated. Procter therefore withdrew to Amherst- 
burg and made no more trouble until June, when 
he sent raiding parties into Ohio and created panic 
among the isolated settlements. 

Harrison had become convinced that his cam- 
paign must be a defensive one only, until a strong 
American naval force could be mustered on Lake 
Erie. He moved his headquarters to Upper San- 
dusky and Cleveland and concluded to mark time 
while Perry’s fieet was building. The outlook was 
somber, however, for his thin line of garrisons and 
his supply bases. They were threatened in all 


3 


34 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


directions, but he was most concerned for the im- 
portant depot which he had established at Upper 
Sandusky, no more than thirty miles from any 
British landing force which should decide to cross 
Lake Erie. The place had no fortifications; it 
was held by a few hundred green recruits; and the 
only obstacle to a hostile ascent of the Sandusky 
River was a little stockade near its mouth, called 
Fort Stephenson. 

For the Americans to lose the accumulation of 
stores and munitions which was almost the only 
result of a year’s campaign would have been a fatal 
blow. Harrison was greatly disturbed to hear that 
Tecumseh had gathered his warriors and was fol- 
lowing the trail that led to Upper Sandusky and 
that Procter was moving coastwise with his troops 
in a flotilla under oars and sail. Harrison was, or 
believed himself to be, in grave danger of confront- 
ing a plight similar to that of William Hull, beset 
in front, in flank, inrear. His first thought was to 
evacuate the stockade of Fort Stephenson and to 
concentrate his* force, although this would leave | 
the Sandusky River open for a British advance 
from the shore of Lake Erie. ' 

An order was sent to young Major Croghan, who 
held Fort Stephenson with one hundred and sixty 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 35 


men, to burn the buildings and retreat as fast as 
possible up the river or along the shore of Lake 
Erie. This officer, 2a Kentuckian not yet twenty- 
one years old, who honored the regiment to which 
he belonged, deliberately disobeyed his commander. 
By so doing he sounded a ringing note which was 
like the call of trumpets amidst the failures, the 
cloudy uncertainties, the lack of virile leadership, 
that had strewn the path of the war. In writing 
he sent this reply back to General William Henry 
Harrison: “We have determined to maintain this 
place, and by Heaven, we will.” 

Tt was a turning point, in a way, presaging more 
hopeful events, a warning that youth must be 
served and that the doddering oldsters were to 
give place to those who could stand up under 
the stern and exacting tests of warfare. Such rash 
ardor was not according to precedent. Harrison 
promptly relieved the impetuous Croghan of his 
command and sent a colonel to replace him. But 
Croghan argued the point so eloquently that the 
stockade was restored to him next day and he won 
his chance to do or die. Harrison consolingly in- 
formed him that he was to retreat if attacked by 
British troops “but that to attempt to retire in the 
face of an Indian force would be vain.” 


36 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Major Croghan blithely prepared to do anything 
else than retreat, while General Harrison stayed 
ten miles away to plan a battle against Tecum- 
‘seh’s Indians if they should happen to come in his 
direction. On the Ist of August, Croghan’s scouts 
informed him that the woods swarmed with In- 
dians and that British boats were pushing up the 
river. Procter was on the scene again, and no 
sooner had his four hundred regulars found a land- 
ing place than a curt demand for surrender came to 
Major Croghan. The British howitzers peppered 
the stockade as soon as the refusal was delivered, 
but they failed to shake the spirit of the dauntless 
hundred and sixty American defenders. On the 
following day, the 2d of August, Procter stupidly 
repeated his error of a direct assault upon sheltered 
riflemen, which had cost him heavily at the Raisin 
and at Fort Meigs. He ordered his redcoats to carry 
Fort Stephenson. Again and again they marched 
forward until all the officers had been shot down and 
a fifth of the force was dead or wounded. American 
valor and marksmanship had proved themselves 
in the face of heavy odds. At sunset the beaten 
British were flocking into their boats, and Procter 
was again on his way to Amherstburg. His excuse 
for the trouncing laid the blame on the Indians: 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 37 


The troops, after the artillery had been used for 
some hours, attacked two faces and, impossibilities 
being attempted, failed. The fort, from which the 
severest fire I ever saw was maintained during the 
attack, was well defended. The troops displayed 
the greatest bravery, the much greater part of whom 
reached the fort and made every effort to enter;-but 
the Indians who had proposed the assault and, had it 
not been assented to, would have ever stigmatized the 
British character, scarcely came into fire before they 
ran out of its reach. A more than adequate sacrifice 
having been made to Indian opinion, I drew off the 
brave assailants. 


The sound of Croghan’s guns was heard in 
General Harrison’s camp at Seneca, ten miles up 
the river. Harrison had nothing to say but this: 
“The blood be upon his own head. I wash my 
hands of it.” This was a misguided speech which 
the country received with marked disfavor while it 
acclaimed young Croghan as the sterling hero of 
the western campaign. He could be also a loyal 
as well as a successful subordinate, for he ably 
defended Harrison against the indignation which 
menaced his station as commander of the army. 
The new Secretary of War, John Armstrong, ironi- 
cally referred to Procter and Harrison as being 
always in terror of each other, the one actually fly- 
ing from his supposed pursuer after his fiasco at 


88 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Fort Stephenson, the other waiting only for the 
arrival of Croghan at Seneca to begin a camp 
conflagration and flight to Upper Sandusky. k 

The reconquest of Michigan and the Northwest 
depended now on the American navy. Harrison 
wisely halted his inglorious operations by land un- 
til the ships and sailors were ready to codperate. 
Because the British sway on the Great Lakes was 
unchallenged, the general situation of the enemy 
was immensely better than it had been at the be- 
ginning of the campaign. During a year of war 
the United States had steadily lost in men, in terri- 
tory, in prestige, and this in spite of the fact that 
the opposing forces across the Canadian border 
were much smaller. 

That the men of the American navy would be 
prompt to maintain the traditions of the service 
was indicated in a small way by an incident of the 
previous year on Lake Erie. In September, 1812, 
Lieutenant Jesse D. Elliott had been sent to Buffa- 
lo to find a site for building naval vessels. A few 
weeks later he was fitting out several purchased 
schooners behind Squaw Island. Suddenly there 
came sailing in from Amherstburg and anchored 
off Fort Erie two British armed brigs, the De- 
troit which had been surrendered by Hull, and the 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 39 


Caledonia which had helped to subduethe American 
garrison at Mackinac. Elliott had no ships ready 
for action, but he was not to be daunted by such an 
obstacle. It so happened that ninety Yankee sea- 
men had been sent across country from New York 
by Captain Isaac Chauncey. These worthy tars 
had trudged the distance on foot, a matter of five 
hundred miles, with their canvas bags on their 
backs, and they rolled into port at noon, in the nick 
of time to serve Elliott’s purpose. They were in- 
dubitably tired, but he gave them not a moment 
for rest. A ration of meat and bread and a stiff 
tot ‘of grog, and they turned to and manned the 
boats which were to cut out the two British brigs 
when darkness fell. 

Elliott scraped together fifty soldiers and, filling 
two cutters with his amphibious company, he 
stole out of Buffalo and pulled toward Fort Erie. 
At one o’clock in the morning of the 9th of October 
they were alongside the pair of enemy brigs and 
together the bluejackets and the infantry tumbled 
over the bulwarks with cutlass, pistols, and board- 
ing pike. In ten minutes both vessels were cap- 
tured and under sail for the American shore. The 
Caledonia was safely beached at Black Rock, where 
Elliott was building his little navy yard. The 


40 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


wind, however, was so light that the Detroit was 
swept downward by the river current and had to 
anchor under the fire of British batteries. These 
she fought with her guns until all her powder was 
shot away. Then she cut her cable, hoisted sail 
again, and took the bottom on Squaw Island, where 
both British and American guns had the range of 
her. Elliott had to abandon her and set fire to the 
hull, but he afterward recovered her ordnance. 
What Elliott had in mind shows the temper of 
this ready naval officer. ‘‘A strong inducement,” 
he wrote, “was that with these two vessels and 
those I have purchased, I should be able to meet 
the remainder of the British force on the Upper 
Lakes.’ The loss of the Detroit somewhat dis- 
appointed this ambitious scheme but the success 
of the audacious adventure foreshadowed later and 
larger exploits with far-reaching results. Isaac 
Brock, the British general in Canada, had the 
genius to comprehend the meaning of this naval 
exploit. ‘This event is particularly unfortunate,” 
he wrote, “and may reduce us to incalculable dis- 
tress. The enemy is making every exertion to gain 
a naval superiority on both lakes; which, if they 
accomplish, I do not see how we can retain the 
country.” And to Procter, his commander at 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 41 


Detroit, he disclosed the meaning of the naval loss 
as it affected the fortunes of the western campaign: 
“This will reduce us to great distress. You will 
have the goodness to state the expedients you 
possess to enable us to replace, as far as possible, 
the heavy loss we have suffered in the Detroit.” 
But another year was required to teach the 
American Government the lesson that a few small 
vessels roughly pegged together of planks sawn 
from the forest, with a few hundred seamen and 
guns, might be far more decisive than the random 
operations of fifty thousand troops. This lesson, 
however, was at last learnt; and so, in the summer 
of 1813, General William Henry Harrison waited 
at Seneca on the Sandusky River until he received, 
on the 10th of September, the deathless despatch 
of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry: “We have 
met the enemy and they are ours.”” The navy had 
at last cleared the way for the army. 
Expeditiously forty-five hundred infantry were 
embarked and set ashore only three miles from the 
coveted fort at Amherstburg. A mounted regi- 
ment of a thousand Kentuckians, raised for frontier 
defense by Richard M. Johnson, moved along the 
road to Detroit. Harrison was about to square 
accounts with Procter, who had no stomach for a 


42 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


stubborn defense. Tecumseh, still loyal to the 
British cause, summoned thirty-five hundred of his 
warriors to the royal standard to stem this Ameri- 
can invasion. They expected that Procter would 
offer a courageous resistance, for he had also almost 
a thousand hard-bitted British troops, seasoned by 
a year’s fighting. But Procter’s sun had set and 
disgrace was about to overtake him. To Tecum- 
seh, a chieftain who had waged war because of the 
wrongs suffered by his own people, the thought of 
flight in this crisis was cowardly and intolerable. 
When Procter announced that he proposed to seek 
refuge in retreat, Tecumseh told him to his face 
that he was like a fat dog which had carried its 
tail erect and now that it was frightened dropped 
its tail between its legs and ran. The English 
might scamper as far as they liked but the Indians 
would remain to meet the American invaders. 

It was a helter-skelter exodus from Amherstburg 
and Detroit. All property that could not be 
moved was burned or destroyed, and Procter set 
out for Moraviantown, on the Thames River, 
seventy miles along the road to Lake Ontario. 
Harrison, amazed at this behavior, reported: 
“Nothing but infatuation could have governed 
General Proctor’s conduct. The day I landed 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 43 


below Malden [Amherstburg] he had at his dis- 
posal upward of three thousand Indian warriors; his 
regular force reinforced by the militia of the dis- 
trict would have made his number nearly equal to 
my aggregate, which on the day of landing did not 
exceed forty-five hundred. . . . His inferior offi- 
cers say that his conduct has been a series of 
continued blunders.” 

Procter had put a week behind him before Harri- 
son set out from Amherstburg in pursuit, but the 
British column was hampered in flight by the 
women and children of the deserted posts, the sick 
and wounded, the wagon trains, the stores, and 
baggage. The organization had gone to pieces be- 
cause of the demoralizing example set by its leader. 
A hundred miles of wilderness lay between the 
fugitives and a place of refuge. Overtaken on the 
Thames River, they were given nochoice. It was 
fight or surrender. Ahead of the American infan- 
try brigades moved Johnson’s mounted Kentucki- 
ans, armed with muskets, rifles, knives, and toma- 
hawks, and led by a resourceful and enterprising 
soldier. Procter was compelled to form his lines of 
battle across the road on the north bank of the 
Thames or permit this formidable American cav- 
alry to trample his straggling ranks under hoof. 


44 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Tecumseh’s Indians, stationed in a swamp, covered 
his right flank and the river covered his left. Har- 
rison came upon the enemy early in the afternoon 
of the 5th of October and formed his line of battle. 
The action was carried on in a manner “‘not sanc- 
tioned by anything that I had seen or heard of,” 
said Harrison afterwards. This first American vic- 
tory of the war on land was, indeed, quite irregular 
and unconventional. It was won by Johnson’s 
mounted riflemen, who divided and charged both 
the redcoats in front and the Indians in the swamp. 
One detachment galloped through the first and 
second lines of the British infantry while the other 
drove the Indians into the American left wing and 
smashed them utterly. ‘Tecumseh was among the 
slain. It was all over in one hour and twenty 
minutes. Harrison’s foot soldiers had no chance 
to close with the enemy. The Americans lost 
only fifteen killed and thirty wounded, and they 
took about five hundred prisoners and all Procter’s 
artillery, muskets, baggage, and stores. 

Not only was the Northwest Territory thus re- 
gained for the United States but the power of the 
Indian alliance was broken. Most of the hostile 
tribes now abandoned the British cause. Tecum- 
seh’s confederacy of Indian nations fell to pieces 


LOST GROUND REGAINED 45 


with the death of its leader. The British army of 
Upper Canada, shattered and unable to receive 
reinforcements from overseas, no longer menaced 
Michigan and the western front of the American 
line. General Harrison returned to Detroit at his 
leisure, and the volunteers and militia marched 
homeward, for no more than two regular brigades 
were needed to protect all this vast area. The 
struggle for its possession was a closed episode. In 
this quarter, however, the war cry “Onto Canada!” 
was no longer heard. The United States was satis- 
fied to recover what it had lost with Hull’s sur- 
render and to rid itself of the peril of invasion and 
the horrors of Indian massacres along its wilderness 
frontiers. Of the men prominent in the struggle, 
Procter suffered official disgrace at the hands of his 
own Government and William Henry Harrison 
became a President of the United States. 


CHAPTER III 
PERRY AND LAKE ERIE 


Amin the prolonged vicissitudes of these western 
campaigns, two subordinate officers, the boyish 
Major Croghan at Fort Stephenson and the dash- 
ing Colonel Johnson with his Kentucky mounted 
infantry, displayed qualities which accord with 
the best traditions of American arms. Of kindred 
spirit and far more illustrious was Captain Oliver 
Hazard Perry of the United States Navy. Perry 
dealt with and overcame, on a much larger scale, 
similar obstacles and discouragements — untrained 
men, lack of material, faulty support — but was 
ready and eager to meet the enemy in the hour of 
need. If it is a sound axiom never to despise the 
enemy, it is nevertheless true that excessive pru- 
dence has lost many an action. Farragut’s motto 
has been the keynote of the success of all the great 
sea-captains, “‘L’audace, et encore de Vaudace, et 


toujours de l’'audace.” 
46 


PERRY AND LAKE ERIE AT 


It was not until the lesson of Hull’s surrender had 
aroused the civil authorities that Captain Chaun- 
cey of the navy yard at New York received orders 
in September, 1812, “to assume command of the 
naval force on Lakes Erie and Ontario and to use 
every exertion to obtain control of them this fall.” 
Chauncey was an experienced officer, forty years 
old, who had not rusted from inactivity like the 
elderly generals who had been given command of 
armies. He knew what he needed and how to 
get it. Having to begin with almost nothing, he 
busied himself to such excellent purpose that he 
was able to report within three weeks that he 
had forwarded to Sackett’s Harbor on Lake On- 
tario, “one hundred and forty ship carpenters, 
seven hundred seamen and marines, more than one 
hundred pieces of cannon, the greater part of 
large caliber, with musket, shot, carriages, etc. 
The carriages have nearly all been made and the 
shot cast in that time. Nay, I may say that 
nearly every article that has been forwarded has 
been made.” 

It was found impossible to divert part of this 
ordnance to Buffalo because of the excessively bad 
roads, which were passable for heavy traffic only 
by means of sleds during the snows of winter. This 


48 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


obstacle spoiled the hope of putting a fighting force 
afloat on Lake Erie during the latter part of 1812. 
Chauncey consequently established his main base 
at Sackett’s Harbor and lost no time in building 
and buying vessels. In forty-five days from lay- 
ing the keel he launched a ship of the corvette class, 
a third larger than the ocean cruisers Wasp and 
Hornet, ‘and nine weeks ago, ” said he, “the timber 
that she is composed of was growing in the forest.” 

Lieutenant Elliott at the same time had not been 
idle in his little navy yard at Black Rock near © 
Buffalo, where he had assembled a small brig and 
several schooners. In December Chauncey in- 
spected the work and decided to shift it to Presqu’ 
Isle, now the city of Erie, which was much less ex- 
posed to interference by the enemy. Here he got 
together the material for two brigs of three hundred 
tons each, which were to be the main strength of 
Perry’s squadron nine months later. Impatient to 
return to Lake Ontario, where a fleet in being was 
even more urgently needed, Chauncey was glad to 
receive from Commander Oliver Hazard Perry an 
application to serve under him. To Perry was 
promptly turned over the burden and the responsi- 
bility of smashing the British naval power on Lake 
Erie. Events were soon to display the notable — 


PERRY AND LAKE ERIE 49 


differences in temperament and capabilities between 
_ these two men. Though he had greater opportu- 
nities on Lake Ontario, Chauncey was too cautious 
and held the enemy in too much respect; wherefore 
he dodged and parried and fought inconclusive 
engagements with the fleet of Sir James Yeo until 
destiny had passed him by. He lives in history as 
a competent and enterprising chief of dockyards 
and supplies but not as a victorious seaman. 

To Perry, in the flush of his youth at twenty- 
eight years, was granted the immortal spark of 
greatness to do and dare and the personality which 
impelled men gladly to serve him and to die for 
him. His difficulties were huge, but he attacked 
them with a confidence which nothing could dis- 
may. First he had to concentrate his divided 
force. Lieutenant Elliott’s flotilla of schooners at 
that time lay at Black Rock. It was necessary 
to move them to Erie at great risk of capture by 
the enemy, but vigilance and seamanship accom- 
plished this feat. It then remained to finish and 
equip the larger vessels which were being built. 
Two of these were the brigs ordered laid down by 
Chauncey, the Lawrence and the Niagara. Apart 
from these, the battle squadron consisted of seven 


_ small schooners and the captured British brig, the 
4 


50 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Caledonia. In size and armament they were ab- 
surd.cockleshells even when compared with a mod- 
ern destroyer, but they were to make themselves 
superbly memorable. Perry’s flagship was no 
larger than the ancient coasting schooners which 
ply today between Bangor and Boston with cargoes 
of lumber and coal. 

Through the winter and spring of 1813, the car- 
penters, calkers, and smiths were fitting the new 
vessels together from the green timber and plank- 
ing which the choppers and sawyers wrought out 
of the forest. The iron, the canvas, and all the 
other material had to be hauled by horses and oxen 
from places several hundred miles distant. Late 
in July the squadron was ready for active service 
but was dangerously short of men. This, however, 
was the least of Perry’s concerns. He had reck- 
oned that seven hundred and forty officers and 
sailors were required to handle and fight his ships, 
but he did not hesitate to put to sea with a total 
force of four hundred and ninety. 

Of these a hundred were soldiers sent him only 
nine days before he sailed, and most of them trod a 
deck for the first time. Chauncey was so absorbed 
in his own affairs and hazards on Lake Ontario that 
he was not likely to give Perry any more men than 


uther merce dab te be hauled by 
From pakaeeae ae mae fuadred les 
in Jory (he oamadinge was ready 
‘wis dangsmowely short of men. ill 

t + leeet of Peewp’s concernsuy . 
lant eevee hundved and. fortpill 
<owere required to . | 

ved wet hesitate to put to 

fe ‘wy beodred and ninety. y 
. ie imadred were 
Arot a 


aff Jo vwestiwo9s 


a> re aoT's z 


FA “dso vel 


PERRY AND LAKE ERIE 51 


could be spared. This reluctance caused Perry to 
send a spirited protest in which he said: “The 
men that came by Mr. Champlin are a motley set, 
blacks, soldiers, and boys. I cannot think you saw 
them after they were selected.” 

As the superior officer, Chauncey resented the 
criticism and replied with this warning reproof: 
“As you have assured the Secretary that you 
should conceive yourself equal or superior to the 
enemy, with a force of men so much less than I had 
deemed necessary, there will be a great deal ex- 
pected from you by your country, and I trust they 
will not be disappointed in the high expectations 
formed of your gallantry and judgment.” 

The quick temper of Perry flared at this. He 
was about to sail in search of the British fleet with 
what men he had because he was unable to obtain 
more, and he had rightly looked to Chauncey to 
supply the deficiency. Impulsively he asked to be 
relieved of his command and gave expression to his 
sense of grievance in a letter to the Secretary of the 
Navy in which he said, among other things: “I 
cannot serve under an officer who has been so to- 
tally regardless of my feelings. . : . The critical 
state of General Harrison was such that I took upon 
myself the responsibility of going out with the few 


52 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


young officers you had been pleased to send me, 
with the few seamen I had, and as many volun- 
teers as I could muster from the militia. I did not 
shrink from this responsibility but, Sir, at that 
very moment I surely did not anticipate the receipt 
of a letter in every line of which is an insult.” 
Most fortunately Perry’s request for transfer could 
not be granted until after the battle of Lake Erie 
had been fought and won. The Secretary an- 
swered in tones of mild rebuke: “A change of 
commander under existing circumstances, is equally 
inadmissible as it respects the interest of the serv- 
ice and your own reputation. It is right that you 
should reap the harvest which you have sown.” 
Perry’s indignation seems excusable. He had 
shown a cheerful willingness to shoulder the whole 
load and his anxieties had been greater than his 
superiors appeared to realize. Captain Barclay, 
who commanded the British naval force on Lake 
Erie and who had been hovering off Erie while the 
American ships were waiting for men, might readily 
have sent his boats in at night and destroyed the 
entire squadron. Perry had not enough sailors to 
defend his ships, and the regiment of Pennsyl- 
vania militia stationed at Erie to guard the naval 
base refused to do duty on shipboard after dark. 


PERRY AND LAKE ERIE 53 


“TI told the boys to go, Captain Perry,” ex- 
plained their worthless colonel, “but the boys 
won’t go.” 

Perry’s lucky star saved him from disaster, how- 
ever, and on the 2d of August he undertook the 
perilous and awkward labor of floating his larger 
vessels over the shallow bar of the harbor at Erie. 
Barclay’s blockading force had vanished. For Per- 
ry it was then or never. At any moment the 
enemy’s topsails might reappear, and the Ameri- 
can ships would be caught in a situation wholly 
defenseless. Perry first disposed his light-draft 
schooners to cover his channel, and then hoisted 
out the guns of the Lawrence brig and lowered 
them into boats. Scows, or “‘camels,”’ as they were 
called, were lashed alongside the vessel to lift her 
when the water was pumped out of them. There 
was no more than four feet of water on the bar, 
and the brig-of-war bumped and stranded re- 
peatedly even when lightened and assisted in every 
possible manner. After a night and a day of un- 
flagging exertion she was hauled across into deep 
water and the guns were quickly slung aboard. 
The Niagara was coaxed out of harbor in the same 
ingenious fashion, and on the 4th of August Perry 
was able to report that all his vessels were over the 


54 © THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


bar, although Barclay had returned by now and 
“the enemy had been in sight all day.” 

Perry endeavored to force an engagement with- 
out delay, but the British fleet retired to Amherst- 
burg because Barclay was waiting for a new and 
powerful ship, the Detroit, and he preferred to spar 
for time. The American vessels thereupon an- 
chored off Erie and took on stores. They had 
fewer than three hundred men aboard, and it was 
bracing news for Perry to receive word that a hun- 
dred officers and men under Commander Jesse D. 
Elliott were hastening to join him. Elliott be- 
came second in command to Perry and assumed 
charge of the Niagara. 

For almost a month the Stars and Stripes flew 
unchallenged from the masts of the American ships. 
Perry made his base at Put-in Bay, thirty miles" 
southeast of Amherstburg, where he could intercept 
the enemy passing eastward. The British com- 
mander, Barclay, had also been troubled by lack of 
seamen and was inclined to postpone action. He 
was nevertheless urged on by Sir George Prevost, 
the Governor General of Canada, who told him 
that “he had only to dare and he would be success- 
ful.”” A more urgent call on Barclay to fight was 
due to the lack of food in the Amherstburg region, 


PERRY AND LAKE ERIE 55 


where the water route was now blockaded by the 
American ships. The British were feeding four- 
teen thousand Indians, including warriors and 
their families, and if provisions failed the red men 
would be likely to vanish. 

At sunrise of the 10th of September, a sailor at 
the masthead of the Lawrence sighted the British 
squadron steering across the lake with a fair wind 
and ready to give battle. Perry instantly sent his 
crews to quarters and trimmed sail to quit the bay 
and form his line in open water. He was eager to 
take the initiative, and it may be assumed that 
he had forgotten Chauncey’s prudent admonition: 
“The first object will be to destroy or cripple the 
enemy’s fleet; but in all attempts upon the fleet 
you ought to use great caution, for the loss of a 
single vessel may decide the fate of a campaign.” 

Small, crude, and hastily manned as were the 
ships engaged in this famous fresh-water battle, it 
should be borne in mind that the proven principles 
of naval strategy and tactics used were as sound 
and true as when Nelson and Rodney had demon- 
strated them in mighty fleet actions at sea. In the 
final council in his cabin, Perry echoed Nelson’s 
words in saying that no captain could go very far 
wrong who placed his vessel close alongside those 


56 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


of the enemy. Chauncey’s counsel, on the other 
hand, would have lost the battle. Perry’s decision 
to give and take punishment, no matter if it should 
cost him a ship or two, won him the victory. 

The British force was inferior, both in the num- 
ber of vessels and the weight of broadsides, but this 
inferiority was somewhat balanced by the greater 
range and hitting power of Barclay’s longer guns. 
Each had what might be called two heavy ships of 
the line: the British, the Detroit and the Queen 
Charlotte, and the Americans, the Lawrence and 
the Niagara. Next in importance and fairly well 
matched were the Lady Prevost under Barclay’s 
flag and the Caledonia under Perry’s. There re- 
mained the light schooner craft of which the Ameri- 
can squadron had six and the British only three. 
Perry realized that if he could put ship against 
ship the odds would be largely in his favor, for, 
with his batteries of carronades which, threw their 
shot but a short distance, he would be unwise to 
maneuver for position and let the enemy pound 
him to pieces at long range. His plan of battle 
was therefore governed entirely by his knowledge 
of Barclay’s strength and of the possibilities of his 
own forces. 

With a light breeze and working to windward, 


PERRY AND LAKE ERIE 57 


Perry’s ship moved to intercept the British squad- 
ron which lay in column, topsails aback and wait- 
ing. The American brigs were fanned ahead by the 
air which breathed in their lofty canvas, but the 
schooners were almost becalmed and four of them 
straggled in the rear, their crews tugging at the 
long sweeps or oars. Two of the faster of these, 
the Scorpion and the Ariel, were slipping along in 
the van where they supported the American flag- 
ship Lawrence, and Perry had no intention of de- 
laying for the others to come up. Shortly before 
noon Barclay opened the engagement with the long 
guns of the Detroit, but as yet Perry was unable 
to reach his opponent and made more sail on the 
Lawrence in order to get close. 

The British gunners of the Detroit were already 
finding the target, and Perry discovered that the 
Lawrence was difficult to handle with much of her 
rigging shot away. He ranged ahead until his 
ship was no more than two hundred and fifty yards 
from the Detroit. Even then the distance was 
greater than desirable for the main battery of 
carronades. A good golfer can drive his tee shot 
as far as the space of water which separated these 
two indomitable flagships as they fought. It was 
a different kind of naval warfare from that of today 


58 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


in which superdreadnaughts score hits at battle 
ranges of twelve and fourteen miles. 

Perry’s plans were now endangered by the failure 
of his other heavy ship, the Niagara, to take care 
of her own adversary, the Queen Charlotte, which 
forged ahead and took a station where her broad- 
sides helped to reduce the Lawrence to a mass of 
wreckage. A bitter dispute which challenged the 
courage and judgment of Commander Elliott of the 
Niagara was the aftermath of this flaw in the con- 
duct of the battle. It was charged that he failed 
to go to the support of his commander-in-chief 
when the flagship was being destroyed under his 
eyes. The facts admit of no doubt: he dropped 
astern and for two hours remained scarcely more 
than a spectator of a desperate action in which his 
ship was sorely needed, whereas if he had followed 
the order to close up, the Lawrence need never have 
struck to the enemy. 

In his defense he stated that lack of wind had 
prevented him from drawing ahead to engage and 
divert the Queen Charlotte and that he had been in- 
structed to hold a certain position in line. At the 
time Perry found no fault with him, merely setting 
down in his report that “at half-past two, the wind 
springing up, Captain Elliott was enabled to bring 


PERRY AND LAKE ERIE 59 


his vessel, the Niagara, gallantly into close action.” 
Later Perry formulated charges against his second 
in command, accusing him of having kept on a 
course “which would in a few minutes have carried 
said vessel entirely out of action.” These docu- 
ments were pigeonholed and a Court of Inquiry 
commended Elliott as a brave and skillful officer 
who had gained laurels in that “splendid victory.” 
The issue was threshed out by naval experts 
who violently disagreed, but there was glory enough 
for all and the flag had suffered no stain. Certain 
it is that the battle would have lacked its most 
brilliantly dramatic episode if Perry had not been 
compelled to shift his pennant from the blazing 
hulk of the Lawrence and, from the quarter-deck of 
the Niagara, to renew the conflict, rally his vessels, 
and snatch a triumph from the shadow of disaster. 
It was one of the great moments in the storied 
annals of the American navy, comparable with a 
John Paul Jones shouting “We have not yet begun to 
fight!” from the deck of the shattered, water-logged 
Bon Homme Richard, or a Farragut lashed in the 
rigging and roaring “Damn the torpedoes! Full 
speed ahead!’ 
Because of the failure of Elliott to bring the 
Niagara into action at once, as had been laid down 


60 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


in the plan of battle, Perry found himself in des- 
perate straits aboard the beaten Lawrence. Her 
colors still flew but she could fire only one gun of 
her whole battery, and more than half the ship’s 
company had been killed or wounded — eighty- 
three men out of one hundred and forty-two. It 
was impossible to steer or handle her and she 
drifted helpless. Then it was that Perry, seeing 
the laggard Niagara close at hand, ordered a boat 
away and was transferred to a ship which was still 
fit and ready to continue the action. As soon as 
he had left them, the survivors of the Lawrence 
hauled down their flag in token of surrender, for 
there was nothing else for them to do. 

As soon as he jumped on deck, Perry took com- 
mand of the Niagara, sending Elliott off to bring 
up the rearmost schooners. There was no lagging 
or hesitation now. With topgallant sails sheeted 
home, the Niagara bore down upon the Detroit, 
driven by a freshening breeze. Barclay’s crippled 
flagship tried to avoid being raked and so fouled 
her consort, the Queen Charlotte. The two British 
ships lay locked together while the American guns 
pounded them with terrific fire. Presently they 
got clear of each other and pluckily attempted to 
carry on the fight. But the odds were hopeless. 


PERRY AND LAKE ERIE 61 


The officer whose painful duty it was to signal the 
surrender of the Detroit said of this British flagship: 
“The ship lying completely unmanageable, every 
brace cut away, the mizzen-topmast and gaff down, 
all the other masts badly wounded, not a stay left 
forward, hull shattered very much, a number of 
guns disabled, and the enemy’s squadron raking 
both ships ahead and astern, none of our own in 
a position to support us, I was under the pain- 
ful necessity of answering the enemy to say we 
had struck, the Queen Charlotte having previously 
done so.” 

It was later reported of the Detroit that it was 
“impossible to place a hand upon that broadside 
which had been exposed to the enemy’s fire with- 
out covering some portion of a wound, either from 
grape, round, canister, or chain shot.” The crew 
had suffered as severely as the vessel. The valiant 
commander of the squadron, Captain Barclay, was 
a fighting sailor who had lost an arm at Trafalgar. 
In the battle of Lake Erie he was twice wounded 
and had to be carried below. His first lieutenant 
was mortally hurt and in the critical moments the 
ship was left in charge of the second lieutenant. 
In this gallant manner did Perry and Barclay, both 
heirs of the bulldog Anglo-Saxon strain, wage their 


62 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


bloody duel without faltering and thus did the 
British sailor keep his honor bright in defeat. 

The little American schooners played a part in 
smashing the enemy. The Ariel and Scorpion 
held their positions in the van and their long guns 
helped deal the finishing blows to the Detroit, while 
the others came up when the breeze grew stronger 
and engaged their several opponents. The Cale- 
donia was effective in putting the Queen Charlotte 
out of action. When the larger British ships sur- 
rendered, the smaller craft were compelled to fol- 
low the example, and the squadron yielded to 
Perry after three hours of battle. It was in no 
boastful strain but as the laconic fact that he sent 
his famous message to the nation. He had met 
the enemy and they were all his. It was leader- 
ship — brilliant and tenacious — which had em- 
ployed makeshift vessels, odd lots of guns, and 
crews which included militia, sick men, and “a 
motley set of blacks and boys.” Barclay had 
labored under handicaps no less heavy, but it was 
his destiny to match himself against a superior 
force and a man of unquestioned naval genius. 
Oliver Hazard Perry would have made a name for 
himself, no doubt, if his career had led him to blue 
water and the command of stately frigates. 


PERRY AND LAKE ERIE 63 


On Lake Ontario, Chauncey dragged his naval 
campaign through two seasons and then left the 
enemy in control. Perry, by opening the way for 
Harrison, rewon the Northwest for the United 
States because he sagaciously upheld the doctrine 
of Napoleon that “war cannot be waged without 
running risks.” Behind his daring, however, lay 
tireless, painstaking preparation and a thorough 
knowledge of his trade. 


CHAPTER IV 
EBB AND FLOW ON THE NORTHERN FRONT 


THE events of the war by land are apt to be as con- 
fusing in narration as they were in fact. The 
many forays, skirmishes, and retreats along the 
Canadian frontier were campaigns in name only, 
ambitiously conceived but most: haltingly exe- 
cuted. Major General Dearborn, senior officer of 
the American army, had failed to begin operations 
in the center and on the eastern flank in time to 
divert the enemy from Detroit; but in the autumn 
of 1812 he was ready to attempt an invasion of 
Canada by way of Niagara. The direct command 
was given to Major General Stephen Van Rens- 
selaer of the New York State militia, who was to 
advance as soon as six thousand troops were as- 
sembled. At first Dearborn seemed hopeful of 
success. He predicted that “with the militia and 
other troops there or on the march, they will be 


able, I presume, to cross over into Canada, carry 
64 


THE NORTHERN FRONT 65 


all the works in Niagara, and proceed to the other 
posts in that province in triumph.” 

The fair prospect soon clouded, however, and 
Dearborn, who was of a doubtful, easily discour- 
aged temperament, partly due to age and infirmi- 
ties, discovered that ‘‘a strange fatality seemed 
to have pervaded the whole arrangements.” Yet 
this was when the movement of troops and sup- 
plies was far brisker and better organized than 
could have been expected and when the armed 
strength was thrice that of Brock, the British 
general, who was guarding forty miles of front 
along the Niagara River with less than two thou- 
sand men. At Queenston which was the objective 
of the first American attack there were no more 
than two companies of British regulars and a few 
militia, in all about three hundred troops. The 
rest of Brock’s forces were at Chippawa and Fort 
Erie, where the heavy assaults were expected. 

An American regular brigade was on the march 
to Buffalo, but its commander, Brigadier General 
Alexander Smyth, was not subordinate to Van 
Rensselaer, and the two had quarreled. Smyth 
paid no attention to a request for a council of war 
and went his own way. On the night of the 10th 


of October Van Rensselaer attempted to cross the 
5 


> 
66 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Niagara River, but there was some blunder about 
the boats and the disgruntled troops returned to 
camp. Two nights later they made another at- 
tempt but found the British on the alert and failed 
to dislodge them from the heights of Queenston. 
A small body of American regulars, led by gallant 
young Captain Wool, managed to clamber up a 
path hitherto regarded as impassable. There they 
held a precarious position and waited for help. 
Brock, who was commanding the British in person, 
was instantly killed while storming this hillside at 
the head of reinforcements. In him the enemy lost 
its ablest and most intrepid leader. 

The forenoon wore on and Captain Wool, pain- 
fully wounded, still clung to the heights with his 
two hundred and fifty men. A relief column which 
crossed the river found itself helpless for lack of 
artillery and intrenching tools and was compelled 
to fall back. Van Rensselaer forgot his bickering 
with General Smyth and sent him urgent word to 
hasten to the rescue. Winfield Scott, then a lieu- 
tenant colonel, came forward as a volunteer and 
took command of young Captain Wool’s forlorn 
hope. Gradually more men trickled up the heights 
until the ground was defended by three hundred 
and fifty regulars and two hundred and fifty militia. 


THE NORTHERN FRONT 67 


Meanwhile the British troops were mustering up 
the river at Chippawa, and the red lines of their 
veterans were descried advancing from Fort George 
below. Bands of Indians raced by field and forest 
to screen the British movements and to harass 
the American lines. The tragic turn of events ap- 
pears to have dazed General Van Rensselaer. The 
failure to save the beleaguered and outnumbered 
Americans on the heights he blamed upon his 
troops, reporting next day that his reinforcements 
embarked very slowly. “I passed immediately 
over to accelerate them,” said he, “‘but to my utter 
astonishment I found that at the very moment 
when complete victory was in our hands the ardor 
of the unengaged troops had entirely subsided. 
I rode in all directions, urged the men by every 
consideration to pass over; but in vain.” 

The candid fact seems to be that this general of 
militia had made a sorry mess of the whole affair, 
and his men had lost all faith in his ability to turn 
the adverse tide. He stood and watched six hun- 
dred valiant American soldiers make their last stand 
on the rocky eminence while the British hurled 
more and more men up the slope. One concerted 
attack by the idle American army would have 
swept them away like chaff. But there was only 


68 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


one Winfield Scott in the field, and his lot was east 
with those who fought to the bitter end as a sacri- 
fice to stupidity. The six hundred were sur- 
rounded. They were pushed back by weight of op- 
posing numbers. Still they died in their tracks, 
until the survivors were actually pushed over a 
cliff and down to the bank of the river. 

There they surrendered, for there were no boats 
to carry them across. The boatmen had fled to 
cover as soon as the Indians opened fire on them. 
Winfield Scott was among the prisoners together 
with a brigadier general and two more lieutenant 
colonels who had been bagged earlier in the day. 
Ninety Americans were killed and many more 
wounded, while a total of nine hundred were cap- 
tured during the entire action. Van Rensselaer 
had lost almost as many troops as Hull had lost at 
Detroit, and he had nothing to show for it. He 
very sensibly resigned his command on thenext day. 

The choice of his successor, however, was again 
unfortunate. Brigadier General Alexander Smyth 
had been inspector general in the regular army 
before he was given charge of an infantry brigade. 
He had a most flattering opinion of himself, and 
promotion to the command of an army quite turned 


his head. The oratory with which he proceeded 


THE NORTHERN FRONT 69 


to bombard friend and foe strikes the one note of 
humor in a chapter that is otherwise depressing. 
Through the newspapers he informed his troops 
that their valor had been conspicuous “but the 
nation has been unfortunate in the selection of 
some of those who have directed it.... The 
cause of these miscarriages is apparent. Thecom- 
manders were popular men, ‘destitute alike of 
theory and experience’ in the art of war.” “In 
a few days,” he announced, “the troops under 
my command will plant the American standard in 
Canada. They are men accustomed to obedience, 
silence, and steadiness. They will conquer or they 
will die. Will you stand with your arms folded and 
look on this interesting struggle? ... Has the 
race degenerated? Or have you, under the bane- 
ful influence of contending factions, forgot your 
country? ... Shame, where is thy blush? No!” 

This invasion of Canada was to be a grim, deadly 
business; no more trifling. His heroic troops were 
to hold their fire until they were within five paces 
of the enemy, and then to charge bayonets with 
shouts. They were to think on their country’s 
honor torn, her rights trampled on, her sons en- 
slaved, her infants perishing by the hatchet, not 
forgetting to be strong and brave and to let the 


70 § THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 
ruffan power of the British King cease on ie 


continent. 

Buffalo was the base of this particular cemaaal 
of Canada. The advance guard would cross the 
Niagara River from Black Rock to destroy the 
enemy’s batteries, after which the army was to 
move onward, three thousand strong. The first 
detachments crossed the river early in the morning 
on the 28th of November and did their work well 
and bravely and captured the guns in spite of 
heavy loss. The troops then began to embark at 
sunrise, but by noon only twelve hundred were in 
boats. Upstream they moved at a leisurely pace 
and went ashore for dinner. The remainder of the 
three thousand, however, had failed to appear, and 
Smyth refused to invade unless he had the full 
number. Altogether, four thousand troops, all 
regulars, had been sent to Niagara but many of 
them had been disabled by sickness. 

General Smyth then called a council of war, 
shifted the responsibility from his own shoulders, 
and decided to delay the invasion. Again he 
changed his mind and ordered the men into the 
boats two days later. Fifteen hundred men an- 
swered the summons. Again the general marched 
them ashore after another council of war, and then 


‘THE NORTHERN FRONT 71 


and there he abandoned his personal conquest of 
Canada. His army literally melted away, “about 
four thousand men without order or restraint dis- 
charging their muskets in every direction,” writes 
an eyewitness. They riddled the general’s tent 
with bullets by way of expressing their opinion of 
him, and he left the camp not more than two leaps 
ahead of his earnest troops. He requested per- 
mission to visit his family, after the newspapers had 
branded him as a coward, and the visit became 
permanent. His name was dropped from the 
army rolls without the formality of an inquiry. 
It seemed rather too much for the country to 
bear that, in the first year of the war, its armies 
should have suffered from the failures of Hull, Van 
Rensselaer, and Smyth. 

It had been hoped that General Dearborn might 
carry out his own idea of an operation against 
Montreal at the same time as the Niagara cam- 
paign was in progress. On the shore of Lake Cham- 
plain, Dearborn was in command of the largest and 
most promising force under the American flag, in- 
cluding seven regiments of the regular army. Tak- 
ing personal charge at Plattsburg, he marched this 
body of troops twenty miles in the direction of the 
Canadian border. Here the militia refused to go 


72 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


on, and he marched back again after four days in 
the field. Beset with rheumatism and low spirits, 
he wrote to the Secretary of War: “I had antici- 
pated disappointment and misfortune in the com- 
mencement of the war, but I did by no means ap- 
prehend such a deficiency of regular troops and 
such a series of disasters as we have witnessed.” 
Coupled with this complaint was the request that 
he might be allowed “to retire to the shades of pri- 
vate life and remain a mere but interested nyochenet 
of passing events.” ae 

The Government, however, was not yet ready 
to release Major General Dearborn but instructed 
him to organize an offensive which should obtain 
control of the St. Lawrence River and thereby cut 
communication between Upper and Lower Canada. 
This was the pet plan of Armstrong when he be- 
came Secretary of War, and as soon as was possible 
he set the military machinery in motion. In Feb- 
ruary, 1813, Armstrong told Dearborn to assemble 
four thousand men at Sackett’s Harbor, on Lake 
Ontario, and three thousand at Buffalo. The 
larger force was to cross the lake in the spring, pro- 
tected by Chauncey’s fleet, capture the important 
naval station of Kingston, then attack York (To- 
ronto), and finally join the corps at Buffalo for 


THE NORTHERN FRONT 73 


another operation against the British on the Niag- 
ara River. But Dearborn was not eager for the 
enterprise. He explained that he lacked sufficient 
strength for an operation against Kingston. With 
the support of Commodore Chauncey he proposed 
a different offensive which should be aimed first 
against York, then against Niagara, and finally 
against Kingston. This proposal reversed Arm- 
strong’s programme, and he permitted it to sway 
his decision. Thus the war turned westward from 
the St. Lawrence. 

The only apparent success in this campaign oc- 
eurred at York, the capital of Upper Canada, where 
on the 27th of April one ship under construction 
was burned and another captured after the small 
British garrison had been driven inland. The 
public buildings were also destroyed by fire, though 
Dearborn protested that this was done against his 
orders. In the next year, however, the enemy re- 
taliated by burning the Capitol at Washington. 
The fighting at York was bloody, and the Ameri- 
can forces counted a fifth killed or wounded. They 
remained on the Canadian side only ten days and 
then returned to disembark at Niagara. Here 
Dearborn fell ill, and his chief of staff, Colonel Win- 
field Scott, was left in virtual control of the army. 


74 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


In May, 1813, most of the troops at Plattsburg 
and Sackett’s Harbor were moved to the Niagara | 
region for the purpose of a grand movement to take 
Fort George, at the mouth of that river, from the 
rear and thus redeem the failure of the preceding 
campaign. Commodore Chauncey with his On- 
tario fleet was prepared to codperate and to trans- 
port the troops. Three American brigadiers, Boyd, 
Winder, and Chandler, effected a landing in hand- 
some fashion, while Winfield Scott led an advance 
division. Under cover of the ships they proceeded 
along the beach and turned the right flank of the 
British defenses. Fort George was evacuated, but 
most of the force escaped and made their way 
to Queenston, whence they continued to retreat 
westward along the shore of Lake Ontario. Vin- 
cent, the British general, reported his losses in 
killed and wounded and missing as three hundred 
and fifty-six. 'The Americans suffered far less. It 
was a clean-cut, workmanlike operation, and, ac- 
cording to an observer, “‘ Winfield Scott fought 
nine-tenths of the battle.” But the chief aim 
had been to destroy the British force, and in this 
the adventure failed. 

General Dearborn was not at all reconciled to 
letting the garrison of Fort George get clean away 


THE NORTHERN FRONT 15 


from him, and he therefore sent General Winder 
in pursuit with athousand men. These were rein- 
forced by as many more; and together they fol- 
lowed the trail of the retreating British to Stony 
Creek and camped there for the night. Vincent 
and his sixteen hundred British regulars were in 
bivouac ten miles beyond. The mishap at Fort 
George had by no means knocked the fight out of 
them. Vincent himself led six hundred men back 
in the middle of a black night (the 6th of June) and 
fell upon the American camp. A confused battle 
followed. The two forces intermingled in cursing, 
stabbing, swirling groups. The American generals, 
Chandler and Winder, walked straight into the 
enemy’s arms and were captured. The British 
broke through and took the American batteries but 
failed to keep them. At length both parties re- 
tired, badly punished. The Americans had lost all 
ardor for pursuit and on the following day re- 
treated ten miles and were soon ordered to return 
to Fort George. 

General Dearborn was much distressed by this 
unlucky episode and was in such feeble health that 
he again begged to berelieved. He was, hesaid, “‘so 
reduced in strength as to be incapable of any com- 
mand.” General Morgan Lewis took temporary 


76 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


command at Niagara, but, being soon called to 
‘Sackett’s Harbor, he was succeeded by General 
Boyd, whom Lewis was kind enough to describe, 
by way of recommendation, in these terms: ‘A 
compound of ignorance, vanity, and petulance, 
with nothing to recommend him but that species of 
bravery in the field which is vaporing, boisterous, 
stifling reflection, blinding observation, and better 
adapted to the bully than the soldier.” 

In order to live up to this encomium, Boyd sent 
Colonel Boerstler on the 24th of June, with four 
hundred infantry and two guns, to bombard and 
take an annoying stone house a day’s march from 
Fort George. But two hundred hostile Indians 
so alarmed Boerstler that he attempted to retreat. 
Thirty hostile militia then caused him to halt the 
retreat and send for reinforcements. The rein- 
forcements came to the number of a hundred and 
fifty, but the British also appeared with forty-seven 
more men. Colonel Boerstler thereupon surren- 
dered his total of five hundred and forty soldiers. 
General Dearborn, still the nominal commander 
of the forces, sadly mentioned the disaster as “an 
unfortunate and unaccountable event.” 

There is a better account to be given, however, 
of events at Sackett’s Harbor in this same month 


THE NORTHERN FRONT 17 


of May. The operations on the Niagara front 
had stripped this American naval base of troops 
and of the protection of Chauncey’s fleet. Sir 
George Prevost, the Governor in Chief of Canada, 
could not let the opportunity slip, although he was 
not notable for energy. He embarked with a force 
of regulars, eight hundred men, on Sir James Yeo’s 
ships at Kingston and sailed across Lake Ontario. 
Sackett’s Harbor was defended by only four hun- 
dred regulars of several regiments and about two 
hundred and fifty militia from Albany. Couriers 
rode through the countryside as soon as the British 
ships were sighted, and several hundred volunteers 
came straggling in from farm and shop and mill. 
In them was something of the old spirit of Lexing- 
ton and Bunker Hill, and to lead them there was 
a real man and a soldier with his two feet under 
him, Jacob Brown, a brigadier general of the state 
militia, who consented to act in the emergency. 
He knew what to do and how to communicate to 
his men his own unshaken courage. On the beach 
of the beautiful little harbor he posted five hundred 
of his militia and volunteers to hamper the British 
landing. His second line was composed of regu- 
lars. In rear were the forts with the guns manned. 
The British grenadiers were thrown ashore at 


78 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


dawn on the 28th of May under a wicked fire from 
American muskets and rifles, but their disciplined 
ranks surged forward, driving the militia back at 
the point of the bayonet and causing even the 
regulars to give ground. The regulars halted at a 
blockhouse, where they had also the log barracks 
and timbers of the shipyard for a defense, and there 
they stayed in spite of the efforts of the British 
grenadiers to dislodge them. Jacob Brown, stout- 
hearted and undismayed, rallied his militia in new 
positions. Of the engagement a British officer 
said: “I do not exaggerate when I tell you that 
the shot, both of musketry and grape, was falling 
about us like hail. . . . Those who were left of 
the troops behind the barracks made a dash out to 
charge the enemy; but the fire was so destructive 
that they were instantly turned by it, and the re- 
treat was sounded. Sir George, fearless of danger 
and disdaining to run or to suffer his men to run, 
repeatedly called out to them to retire in order; 
many, however, made off as fast as they could.” 
Before the retreat was sounded, the British ex- 
pedition had suffered severely. One man in three 
was killed or wounded, and the rest of them nar- 
rowly escaped capture. Jacob Brown serenely re- 
ported to General Dearborn that “the militia were 


THE NORTHERN FRONT 79 


all rallied before the enemy gave way and were 
marching perfectly in his view towards the rear of 
his right flank; and I am confident that even then, 
if Sir George had not retired with the utmost pre- 
cipitation to his boats, he would have been cut off.” 

Though he had given the enemy a sound thrash- 
ing, Jacob Brown found his righteous satisfaction 
spoiled by the destruction of the naval barracks, 
shipping, and storehouses. This was the act of a 
flighty lieutenant of the American navy who con- 
cluded too hastily that the battle was lost and 
therefore set fire to the buildings to keep the sup- 
plies and vessels out of the enemy’s hands. Jacob 
Brown in his straightforward fashion emphatically 
placed the blame where it belonged: 


The burning of the marine barracks was as infamous 
a transaction as ever occurred among military men. 
The fire was set as the enemy met our regulars upon 
the main line; and if anything could have appalled these 
gallant men it would have been the flames in their 
rear. We have all, I presume, suffered in the public 
estimation in consequence of this disgraceful burning. 
The fact is, however, that the army is entitled to much 
higher praise than though it had not occurred. The 
navy alone are responsible for what happened on Navy 
Point and it is fortunate for them that they have 
reputations sufficient to sustain the shock. 


80 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


A few weeks later General Dearborn, after his 
repeated failures to shake the British grip on 
the Niagara front and the misfortunes which had 
darkened his campaigns, was retired according to 
his wish. But the American nation was not yet 
rid of its unsuccessful generals. James Wilkinson, 
who was inscrutably chosen to succeed Dearborn, 
was a man of bad reputation and low professional 
standing. “The selection of this unprincipled im- 
becile,”’ said Winfield Scott, “was not the blunder 
of Secretary Armstrong.” Added to this, Wilkin- 
son was a man of broken health. He was shifted 
from command at New Orleans because the South- 
ern Senators insisted that he was untrustworthy 
and incompetent. The regular army regarded him 
with contempt. 

Secretary Armstrong endeavored to mend mat- 
ters by making his own headquarters at Sackett’s 
Harbor, where the next offensive, directed against 
Montreal, was planned under his direction. Suce- 
cess hung upon the codperation and junction of two 
armies moving separately, the one under Wilkinson 
descending the St. Lawrence, the other under Wade 
Hampton setting out from Plattsburg on Lake 
Champlain. The fact that these two officers had 
hated each other for years made a difficult problem 


THE NORTHERN FRONT 81 


no easier. Hampton possessed uncommon ability 
and courage, but he was proud and sensitive, as 
might have been expected in a South Carolina 
gentleman, and he loathed Wilkinson with all his 
heart. That he should yield the seniority to one 
whom he considered a blackguard was to him in- 
tolerable, and he accepted the command on Lake 
Champlain with the understanding that he would 
take no orders from Wilkinson until the two armies 
were combined. 

The expedition from Sackett’s Harbor was ready 
to advance by way of the St. Lawrence in Octo- 
ber, 1813, and comprised seven thousand effective 
troops. Even then the commanding general and 
the Secretary of War had begun to regard the ad- 
venture as dubious and were accusing each other 
of dodging the responsibility. Said Wilkinson to 
Armstrong: “It is necessary to my justification 
that you should, by the authority of the President, 
direct the operations of the army under my com- 
mand particularly against Montreal.” Said Arm- 
strong to Wilkinson: “I speak conjecturally, but 
should we surmount every obstacle in descending 
the river we shall advance upon Montreal ignorant 
of the force arrayed against us and in case of mis- 


fortune having no retreat, the army must surrender 
6 


82 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


at discretion.” This was scarcely the spirit to in- 
spire a conquering army. As though to clinch his 
lack of faith in the enterprise, the Secretary of War 
ordered winter quarters built for ten thousand men 
many miles this side of Montreal, explaining in 
later years that he had suspected the campaign 
would terminate as it did, “with the disgrace of 
doing nothing.” 

On the 17th of October the army embarked in 
bateaux and coasted along Lake Ontario to the 
entrance of the St. Lawrence. After being delayed 
by stormy weather, the flotilla passed the British 
guns across from Ogdensburg and halted twenty 
miles below. There Wilkinson called a council of 
war to decide whether to proceed or retreat. Four 
generals voted to attack Montreal and two were 
reluctant but could see “no other alternative.” 
Wilkinson then became ill and was unable to leave 
his boat or to give orders. Several British gun- 
boats evaded Chauncey’s blockade and ‘annoyed 
the rear of the expedition. Eight hundred British 
infantry from Kingston followed along shore and 
peppered the boats with musketry and canister 
wherever the river narrowed. Finally it became 
necessary for the Americans to land a force to drive 
theenemy away. Jacob Brown took a brigade and 


' THE NORTHERN FRONT 83 


cleared the bank in advance of the flotilla which 
floated down to a farm called Chrystler’s and 
moored for the night. 

General Boyd, who had been sent back with a 
strong force to protect the rear, reported next 
morning that the enemy was advancing in column. 
He was told to turn back and attack. This he did 
with three brigades. It was a brilliant opportu- 
nity to capture or destroy eight hundred British 
troops led by a dashing naval officer, Captain Mul- 
caster. Boyd lived up to his reputation, which 
was such that Jacob Brown had refused to serve 
under him. At this engagement of Chrystler’s 
Farm, with two thousand regulars at his disposal, 
he was unmercifully beaten. Both Wilkinson and 
Morgan Lewis were flat on their backs, too feeble 
to concern themselves with battles. The American 
troops fought without a coherent plan and were de- 
feated and broken in detail. Almost four hundred 
of them were killed, wounded, or captured. Their 
conduct reflected the half-hearted attitude of their 
commanding general and some of his subordinates. 
The badly mauled brigades hastily took to the 
boats and ran the rapids, stopping at the first | 
harbor below. There Wilkinson received tidings 
from Wade Hampton’s army which caused him 


84 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


to abandon the voyage down the St. Lawrence, 
and it is fair to conjecture that he shed no tears 
of disappointment. 

In September Hampton had led his Pinte re- 
cruited to four thousand infantry and a few dra- 
goons, from Lake Champlain to the Canadian 
border in faithful compliance with his instructions 
to join the movement against Montreal. His line 
of march was westward to the Chateauguay River 
where he took a position which menaced both Mont- 
real and that vital artery, the St. Lawrence. Build- 
ing roads and bringing up supplies, he waited there 
for Wilkinson to set his own undertaking in motion. 
Word came from Secretary Armstrong to advance 
along the river, hold the enemy in check, and pre- 
pare to unite with Wilkinson’s army. Hampton 
acted promptly and alarmed the British at Mont- 
real, who foresaw grave consequences and assem- 
bled troops from every quarter. Hampton then 
learned that his army faced an enemy which was 
of vastly superior strength and which had every 
advantage of natural defense, while he himself was 
becoming convinced that Wilkinson was a broken 
reed and that no further support could be expected 
from the Government. General Prevost’s own re- 
ports and letters showed that he had collected in 


THE NORTHERN FRONT 85 


the Montreal district and available for defense at 
least fifteen thousand rank and file, including the 
militia which had been mustered to repel Hamp- 
ton’sadvance. The American position at Chateau- 
guay was not less perilous than that of Harrison 
on the Maumee and far more so than that which 
had cost Dearborn so many disasters at Niagara. 

Hampton moved forward half-heartedly. He 
had received a message from the War Department 
that his troops were to prepare winter quarters and 
these orders confirmed his suspicions that no at- 
tempt against Montreal was intended. ‘These 
papers sunk my hopes,” he wrote in reply, “‘and 
raised serious doubts of that efficacious support 
that had been anticipated. I would have recalled 
the column, but it was in motion and the darkness 
of the night rendered it impracticable.” 

The last words refer to a collision with a small 
force of Canadian militia, led by Lieutenant Colonel 
de Salaberry, who had come forward to impede 
the American advance. These Canadians had ob- 
structed the road with fallen trees and abatis, fall- 
ing back until they found favorable ground where 
they very pluckily intrenched themselves. The 
intrepid party was comprised of a few Glengarry 
Fencibles and three hundred French-Canadian 


86 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Voltigeurs. Colonel de Salaberry was a trained sol- 
dier, and he now displayed brilliant courage and re- 
sourcefulness. Two American divisions attacking 
him were unable to carry his breastworks and were 
driven along the river bank and routed. Hampton’s 
troops abandoned much of their equipment, and 
returned to camp with a loss of about fifty men. 

There was great rejoicing in Canada and rightly 
so, for a victory had been handsomely won without 
the aid of British regulars; and Colonel de Sala- 
berry’s handful of French Canadians received the 
credit for thwarting the American plans against 
Montreal. But, without belittling the signal valor 
of the achievement, the documentary evidence goes 
to prove that Hampton’s failure was largely due to 
the neglect of his Government. His state of mind 
at this time was such that he wrote: “Events 
have no tendency to change my opinion of the 
destiny intended for me, nor my determination 
to retire from a service where I can feel neither 
security nor expect honor.” 

With this tame conclusion the armies of Wilkin- 
son and Hampton tucked themselves into log huts 
for the winter. Both accused the Secretary of War 
of leading them into an impossible venture and of 
then deserting them, while he in his turn accepted 


THE NORTHERN FRONT 87 


their resignations from the army. The fiasco was 
a costly one in quite another direction, for the 
Niagara sector had been overlooked in the elabo- 
rate attempt to capture Montreal. The few Ameri- 
can troops who had gained a foothold on the Cana- 
dian side, at Fort George and the village of Niagara, 
were left unsupported while all the available regu- 
lars were sent to the armies of Wilkinson and 
Hampton. As soon as the British comprehended 
that the grand invasion had crumbled, they be- 
thought themselves of the tempting opportunity 
to recover their forts at Niagara. 

Wilkinson advised that the Americans evacuate 
Fort George, which they did on the 10th of Decem- 
ber, when five hundred British soldiers were march- 
ing to retake it. There was no effort to reinforce 
the garrison, although at the time ten thousand 
American troops were idle in winter quarters. Fort 
Niagara, on the American side, still flew the Stars 
and Stripes, but on the night of the 18th of Decem- 
ber Colonel Murray with five hundred and fifty 
British regulars rushed the fort, surprised the sen- 
tries, and lost only eight men in capturing this 
stronghold and its three hundred and fifty defend- 
ers. It was more like a massacre. Sixty-seven 
Americans were killed by the bayonet. A few 


88 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


nights later the Indian allies were loosed against 
Buffalo and Black Rock and ravaged thirty miles 
of frontier. The settlements were helpless. The 
Government had made not the slightest attempt 
to protect or defend them. 

The war had come to the end of its second year, 
and by land the United States had done no more 
than to regain what Hull lost at Detroit. 'Thecon- 
quest of Canada was a shattered illusion, a sorry 
tale of wasted energy, misdirected armies, sordid 
intrigue, lack of organization. A few worthless 
generals had been swept into the rubbish heap 
where they belonged, and this was the chief item on 
the credit side of the ledger. The state militia sys- 
tem had been found wanting; raw levies, defying 
authority and miserably cared for, had been squan- 
dered against a few thousand disciplined British 
regulars. The nation, angry and bewildered, was 
taking these lessons to heart. The story of 1814 
was to contain far brighter episodes. 


CHAPTER V 
THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 


Ir has pleased the American mind to regard the 
War of 1812 as a maritime conflict. This is natu- 
ral enough, for the issue was the freedom of the sea, 
and the achievements of Yankee ships and sailors 
stood out in brilliant relief against the somber back- 
ground of the inefficiency of the army. The offen- 
sive was thought to be properly a matter for the 
land forces, which had vastly superior advantages 
against Canada, while the navy was compelled to 
act on the defensive against overwhelming odds. 
The truth is that the navy did amazingly well, 
though it could not prevent the enemy’s squadrons 
from blockading American ports or raiding the 
coasts at will. A few single ship actions could 
not vitally influence the course of the war; but 
they served to create an imperishable renown 
for the flag and the service, and to deal a stag- 


gering blow to the pride and prestige of an enemy 
89 


90 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


whose ancient boast it was that Britannia ruled 
the waves. 

The amazing thing is that the navy was able to 
accomplish anything at all, neglected and almost 
despised as it was by the same opinion which had 
suffered the army system to become a melancholy 
jest. During the decade in which Great Britain 
captured hundreds of American merchant ships in 
time of peace and impressed more than six thou- 
sand American seamen, the United States built two 
sloops-of-war of eighteen guns and allowed three 
of her dozen frigates to hasten to decay at their 
mooring buoys. Officers in the service were under- 
paid and shamefully treated by the Government. 
Captain Bainbridge, an officer of distinction, asked 
for leave that he might earn money to support him- 
self, giving as a reason: “TI have hitherto refused 
such offers on the presumption that my country 
would require my services. That presumption is 
removed, and even doubts entertained of the per- 
manency of the naval establishment.” 

But, though Congress refused to build more 
frigates or to formulate a programme for guarding 
American shores and commerce, the tiny navykept 
‘alive the spark of duty and readiness, while the 
nation drifted inevitably towards war. There was 


is 


THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 91 


no scarcity of capable seamen, for the merchant 
marine was an admirable training-school. In those 
far-off days the technique of seafaring and sea fight- 
ing was comparatively simple. The merchant sea- 
man could find his way about a frigate, for in rigging, 
handling, and navigation the ships were very much 
alike. And the American seamen of 1812 were in 
fighting mood; they had been whetted by provoca- 
tion to a keen edge for war. They understood the 
meaning of “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,”’ if 
the landsmen did not. There were strapping sail- 
ors in every deep-water port to follow the fife and 
drum of the recruiting squad. The militia might 
quibble about “rights,” but all the sailors asked 
was the weather gage of a British man-of-war. 
They had no patience with such spokesmen as 
Josiah Quincy, who said that Massachusetts would 
not go to war to contest the right of Great Britain 
to search American vessels for British seamen. 
They had neither forgotten nor forgiven the mortal 
affront of 1807, when their frigate Chesapeake, fly- 
ing the broad pennant of Commodore James Bar- 
ron, refused to let the British Leopard board and 
search her, and was fired into without warning and 
reduced to submission, after twenty-one of the 
American crew had been killed or wounded. 


92 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


That shameful episode was in keeping with the 
attitude of the British navy toward the armed 
ships of the United States, “‘a few fir-built things 
with bits of striped bunting at their mast-heads,” 
as George Canning, British Secretary of State for 
Foreign Affairs, described them. Long before the 
declaration of war British squadrons hovered off 
the port of New York to ransack merchant vessels 
or to seize them as prizes. In the course of the 
Napoleonic wars England had met and destroyed 
the navies of all her enemies in Europe. The bat- 
tles of Copenhagen, the Nile, Trafalgar, and a hun- 
dred lesser fights had thundered to the world the 
existence of an unconquerable sea power. 

Insignificant as it was, the American naval serv- 
ice boasted a history and a high morale. Its ships 
had been active. The younger officers served 
with seniors who had sailed and fought with Biddle 
and Barney and Paul Jones in the Revolution. 
Many of them had won promotions for gallantry 
in hand-to-hand combats in boarding parties, for 
following the bold Stephen Decatur in 1804 when 
he cut out and set fire to the Philadelphia, which 
had fallen into the hands of pirates at Tripoli, and 
helping Thomas Truxtun in 1799-1800 when the 
Constellation whipped the Frenchmen, L’Insurgente 


ey ae pee 


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‘herd 
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$ 


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11. Int the Comptroller’ 's Office, 
Reproduced by courtesy of the 


Nas 


; ships: atthe melons 


Foreiga Affaire, described them 


with bits of striped buating at th 
as George fanning, British ¢ 


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the part of New York to ransackmnetemm 
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Napoleonic wars England had te 

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Oya e Yeotuon Vd asibshieit 10 Py 


tee of Copenhagen/ the we 
dred lesser fights had thundered 
existence of an unconquerable seme 
Insignificant as it was, the Amen 
ice boasted a history aad a high 
had been active The youn 
with seniors who had sailed and fou 
and Barney and Paul Jones in ne 
= 
wm hand-to-hand combats in'Be 
following the bold pant Deeb 
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bud allem inte the hands of at. 
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THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 93 


and La Vengeance. In wardroom or steerage 
almost every man could tell of engagements in 
which he had behaved with credit. Trained in the 
school of hard knocks, the sailor knew the value of 
discipline and gunnery, of the smart ship and the 
willing crew, while on land the soldier rusted and 
lost his zeal. 

The bluejackets were volunteers, not impressed 
men condemned to brutal servitude, and they had 
fought to save their skins in merchant vessels which 
made their voyages, in peril of privateer, pirate, 
and picaroon, from the Caribbean to the China 
Sea. The American merchant marine was at the 
zenith of its enterprise and daring, attracting the 
pick and flower of young manhood, and it offered 
incomparable material for the naval service and 
the fleets of swift privateers which swarmed out to 
harry England’s commerce.* 

The American frigates which humbled the 
haughty Mistress of the Seas beyond all precedent 
were superior in speed and hitting power to any- 
thing of their class afloat. It detracts not at all 
from the glory they won to remember that in every 
instance they were larger and of better design and 


t For an account of the privateers of 1812, see The Old Merchant 
Marine, by Ralph D. Paine (in The Chronicles of America). 


94 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


armament than the British frigates which they shot 
to pieces with such methodical accuracy. 

When war was declared, the American Govern- 
ment was not quite clear as to what should be done 
with the navy. In New York harbor was a squad- 
ron of five ships under Commodore John Rodgers, 
including two of the heavier frigates or forty-fours, 
the President and the United States. Rodgers had 
also the lighter frigate Congress, the brig Argus, ' 
and the sloop Hornet. His orders were to look for 
British cruisers which were annoying commerce off 
Sandy Hook, chase them away, and then return to 
port for “further more extensive and particular 
orders.” One hour after receiving these instruc- 
tions the eager Rodgers put out to sea, with Captain 
Stephen Decatur as a squadron commander. The 
quarry was the frigate Belvidera, the most offen- 
sive of the British blockading force. This warship 
was sighted by the President and overtaken within 
forty-eight hours. An unlucky accident then oc- 
curred. Instead of running alongside, the Prest- 
dent began firing at a distance and was hulling the 
enemy’s stern when a gun on the forecastle burst 
and killed or wounded sixteen American sailors. 
Commodore Rodgers was picked up with a broken 
leg. Meanwhile the Belvidera cast overboard her 


THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 95 


boats and anchors, emptied the fresh water barrels 
to better her sailing trim, and, crowding on every 
stitch of canvas, drew away and was lost to view. 
Rodgers then forgot his orders to return to New 
York and went off in search of the great convoy 
of British merchant vessels homeward bound from 
Jamaica, which was called the plate fleet. He 
sailed as far as the English Channel before quitting 
the chase and then cruised back to Boston. 
Meanwhile Captain Isaac Hull of the Constitu- 
tion had taken on a crew and stores at Annapolis 
and was bound up the coast to New York. Hull’s 
luck appeared to be no better than Rodgers’s. Off 
Barnegat he sailed almost into a strong British 
squadron, which had been sent from Halifax. The 
escape from this grave predicament was an exploit 
of seamanship which is among the treasured memo- 
ries of the service. It was the beginning of the 
career of the Constitution, whose name is still the 
most illustrious on the American naval list and 
whose commanders, Hull and Bainbridge, are num- 
bered among the great captains. It is a privilege 
to behold today, in the Boston Navy Yard, this gal- 
lant frigate preserved as a heritage, her tall masts 
and graceful yards soaring above the grim, gray 
citadels that we call battleships. True it is that a 


96 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


single modern shell would destroy this obsolete, 
archaic frigate which once swept the seas like a 
meteor, but the very image of her is still potent to 
thrill the hearts and animate the courage of an 
American seaman. 

On that luckless July morning, at break of day, 
off the New Jersey coast, it seemed as though the 
Constitution would be flying British colors ere she 
had a chance to fight. On her leeward side stood 
two English frigates, the Guerriére and the Belvi- 
dera. with the Shannon only five miles astern, and 
the rest of the hostile fleet lifting topsails above 
the southern horizon. 

Not a breath of wind stirred. Captain Hull 
called away his boats, and the sailors tugged at 
the oars, towing the Constitution very slowly ahead. 
Captain Broke of the Shannon promptly followed 
suit and signaled for all the boats of the squadron. 
In a long column they trailed at the end of the 
hawser; and the Shannon crept closer. Catspaws 
of wind ruffled the water, and first one ship and 
then the other gained a few hundred yards as upper 
tiers of canvas caught the faint impulse. The 
Shannon was a crack ship, and there was no better 
crew in the British navy, as Lawrence of the Chesa- 
peake afterwards learned to nis mortal sorrow. 


THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 97 


Gradually the Shannon cut down the intervening 
distance until she could make use of her bow guns. 

At this Captain Hull resolved to try kedging his 
ship along, sending a boat half a mile ahead with a 
light anchor and all the spare rope on board. The 
crew walked the capstan round and hauled the ship 
up to the anchor, which they then lifted, carried 
ahead, and dropped again. The Constitution kept 
_ two kedges going all through that summer day, 
but the Shannon was: playing the same game, and 
the two ships maintained their relative positions. 
They shot at each other at such long range that 
no damage was done. Before dusk the Guerriére 
caught a slant of breeze and worked nearer enough 
to bang away at the Constitution, which was, in- 
deed, between the devil and the deep sea. 

Night came on. The sailors, British and Ameri- 
can, toiled until they dropped in their tracks, pull- 
ing at the kedge anchors and hawsers or bending 
to the sweeps of the cutters which towed at inter- 
vals and were exposed to the spatter of shot. It 
seemed impossible that the Constitution could slip 
clear of this pack of able frigates which trailed her 
like hounds. Toward midnight the fickle breeze 
awoke and wafted the ships along under studding 


sails and all the light cloths that were wont to 
7 


98 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


arch skyward. For two hours the men slept on 
deck like logs while those on watch grunted at the 
pump-brakes and the hose wetted the canvas to 
make it draw better. 

The breeze failed, however, and through the 
rest of the night it was kedge and tow again, the 
Shannon and the Guerriére hanging on doggedly, 
confident of taking their quarry. Another day 
dawned, hot and windless, and the situation was 
unchanged. Other British ships had crawled or 
drifted nearer, but the Constitution was always just 
beyond range of their heavy guns. We may imag- 
ine Isaac Hull striding across the poop and back 
again, ruddy, solid, composed, wearing a cocked 
hat and a gold-laced coat, lifting an eye aloft, 
or squinting through his brass telescope, while he 
damned the enemy in the hearty language of 
the sea. He was a nephew of General William 
Hull, but it would have been unfair to remind 
him of it. 

Near sunset of the second day of this unique test 
of seamanship and endurance, a rain squall swept 
toward the Constitution and obscured the ocean. 
Just before the violent gust struck the ship her sea- 
men scampered aloft and took in the upper sails. 
This was all that safety required, but, seeing a 


THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 99 


chance to trick the enemy, Hull ordered the lower 
sails double-reefed as though caught in a gale of 
wind. The British ships hastily imitated him be- 
fore they should be overtaken in like manner and 
veered away from the chase. Veiled in the rain 
and dusk, the Constitution set all sail again and 
foamed at twelve knots on her course toward a port 
of refuge. Though two of the British frigates were 
in sight next morning, the Constitution left them far 
astern and reached Boston safely. 

Seafaring New England was quick to recognize 
the merit of this escape. Even the Federalists, 
who opposed and hampered the war by land, were 
enthusiastic in praise of Captain Hull and his ship. 
They had outsailed and outwitted the best of the 
British men-of-war on the American coast, and a 
general feeling of hopelessness gave way to an ar- 
dent desire to try anew the ordeal of battle. With 
this spirit firing his officers and crew, Hull sailed 
again a few days later on a solitary cruise to the 
eastward with the intention of vexing the enemy’s 
merchant trade and hopeful of finding a frigate 
willing to engage him ina duel. From Newfound- 
land he cruised south until a Salem privateer spoke 
him on the 18th of August and reported a British 
warship close by. The Constitution searched until 


eee 


100 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


the afternoon of the next day and then sighted rid 
old friend, the Guerriére. 

To retell the story of their fight in all pi van- 
ished sea lingo of that day would bewilder the land- 
man and prove tedious to those familiar with 
the subject. The boatswains piped the call, “all 
hands clear ship for action”’; the fife and drum beat 
to quarters; and four hundred men stood by the 
tackles of the muzzle-loading guns with their 
clumsy wooden carriages, or climbed into the tops 
to use their muskets or trim sail. Decks were 
sanded to prevent slipping when blood flowed. 
Boys ran about stacking the sacks of powder or 
distributing buckets of pistois ready for the board- 
ing parties. And against the masts the cutlasses 
and pikes stood ready. 

Captain John Dacres of the ill-fated Guerriére 
was an English gentleman as well as a gallant 
officer. But he did not know his antagonist. Like 
his comrades of the service he had failed to grasp 
the fact that the Constitution and the other Ameri- 
can frigates of her class were the most formidable 
craft afloat, barring ships of the line, and that they 
were to revolutionize the design of war-vessels for 
half a century thereafter. They were frigates, or 
cruisers, in that they carried guns on two decks, 


THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 101 


but the main battery of long twenty-four-pound 
guns was an innovation, and the timbers and plank- 
ing were stouter than had ever been built into ships 
of the kind. So stout, indeed, were the sides that 
shot rebounded from them more than once and thus 
gave the Constitution the affectionate nickname of 
“Old Ironsides.” 

Sublimely indifferent to these odds, Captain 
Dacres had already sent a challenge, with his com- 
pliments, to Commodore Rodgers of the United 
States frigate President, saying that he would be 
very happy to meet him or any other American frig- 
ate of equal force, off Sandy Hook, “for the pur- 
posé of having a few minutes’ téte-a-téte.”” It was 
therefore with the utmost willingness that the Con- 
stitution and the Guerriére hoisted their battle en- 
signs and approached each other warily for an hour 
while they played at long bowls, as was the custom, 
each hoping to disable the other’s spars or rigging 
and so gain the advantage of movement. Finding 
this sort of action inconclusive, however, Hull set 
more sail and ran down to argue it with broadsides, 
coolly biding his time, although Morris, his lieu- 
tenant, came running up again and again to beg 
him to begin firing. Men were being killed beside 
their guns as they stood ready to jerk the lock 


102 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


strings. The two ships were abreast of each other 
and no more than a few yards apart before the 
Constitution returned the cannonade that thundered 
from every gun port of her adversary. 

Within ten minutes the Guerriére’s mizzenmast 
was knocked over the side and her hull was shat- 
tered by the accurate fire of the Yankee gunners, 
who were trained to shoot on the downward roll of 
their ship and so smash below the water line. Al- 
most unhurt, the Constitution moved ahead and 
fearfully raked the enemy’s deck before the ships 
fouled each other. They drifted apart before the 
boarders could undertake their bloody business, 
and then the remaining masts of the British frigate 
toppled overside and she was a helpless wreck. 
Seventy-nine of her crew were dead or wounded 
and the ship was sinking beneath their feet. Cap- 
tain Isaac Hull could truthfully report: “In less 
than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside 
of the enemy she was left without a spar standing, 
and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to 
make it difficult to keep her above water.” 

Captain Dacres struck his flag, and the American 
sailors who went aboard found the guns dis- 
mounted, the dead and dying scattered amid a 
wild tangle of spars and rigging, and great holes 


5 ane = Tal 


ci i a | 


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s 


“Within eviews the Gun "4 
was ins the side and lier be | 
tered bythe eocurate fire of the 
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boars could’ undertake their, 
and then the remaining masts of ' 
: toppled: oversid amd she was a helpe 
Seventy-nine of her crew were dead @ 
| and the ship was « mking booceth dell 
ee tain Isaac Hull could truthfully 
an thirty minutés from the tim wot 
‘ of “sey remy she was left without 
wed the bull eut to pieces insuckh ® 
wae at, das! cult to keep her above 
Deeres struck his flag, and 
aboard feupd the) zn 
cad and dying secettered 
spars and rigging and, creat 


THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 103 


blown through the sides and decks. The Constitu- 
tion had suffered such trifling injury that she was 
fit and ready for action a few hours later. Of her 
crew only seven men were killed and the same num- 
ber hurt. She was the larger ship, and the odds 
in her favor were as ten to seven, reckoned in men 
and guns, for which reasons Captain Hull ought to 
have won. The significance of his victory was 
that at every point he had excelled a British frigate 
and had literally blown her out of the water. His 
crew had been together only five weeks and could 
fairly be called green while the Guerriére, although - 
short-handed, had a complement of veteran tars. 
The British navy had never hesitated to engage 
hostile men-of-war of superior force and had usu- 
ally beaten them. Of two hundred fights between 
single ships, against French, Spanish, Italian, Rus- 
sian, Danish, and Dutch, the English had lost only 
five. The belief of Captain Dacres that he could 
beat the Constitution was therefore neither rash 
nor ill-founded. 

The English captain had ten Americans in his 
crew, but he would not compel them to fight against 
their countrymen and sent them below, although 
he sorely needed every man who could haul at a 
gun-tackle or lay out ona yard. Wounded though 


104 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


he was and heartbroken by the disaster, his chiv- 
alry was faultless, and he took pains to report: “I 
feel it my duty to state that the conduct of Captain 
Hull and his officers toward our men has been that 
of a brave and generous enemy, the greatest care 
being taken to prevent our men losing the smallest 
trifle and the greatest attention being paid to the 
wounded.” 

When the Englishman was climbing up the side 
of the Constitution as a prisoner, Isaac Hull ran to 
help him, exclaiming, “‘Give me your hand, Dacres. 
I know you are hurt.”” No wonder that these two 
captains became fast friends. It is because sea 
warfare abounds in such manly incidents as these 
that the modern naval code of Germany, as ex- 
emplified in the acts of her submarine command- 
ers, was so peculiarly barbarous and repellent. 

On board the Guerriére was Captain William B. 
Orne, of the Salem merchant brig Betsy, which had 
been taken as a prize. His story of the combat is 
~ not widely known and seems worth quoting in part: 


At two p.M. we discovered a large sail to windward 
bearing about north from us. We soon made her out 
to be a frigate. She was steering off from the wind, 
with her head to the southwest, evidently with the in- 
tention of cutting us off as soon as possible. Signals 


THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 105 


were soon made by the Guerriére, but as they were not 
answered the conclusion was, of course, that she was 
either a French or American frigate. Captain Dacres 
appeared anxious to ascertain her character and after 
looking at her for that purpose, handed me his spy- 
glass, requesting me to give him my opinion of the 
stranger. I soon saw from the peculiarity of her sails 
and from her general appearance that she was, without 
doubt, an American frigate, and communicated the 
same to Captain Dacres. He immediately replied 
that he thought she came down too boldly for an 
American, but soon after added, “The better he be- 
haves, the more honor we shall gain by taking him.” 

When the strange frigate came down to within two 
or three miles’ distance, he hauled upon the wind, took 
in all his light sails, reefed his topsails, and deliberately 
prepared for action. It was now about five o’clock in 
the afternoon when he filled away and ran down for the 
Guerriére. At this moment Captain Dacres politely 
said to me: “Captain Orne, as I suppose you do not 
wish to fight against your own countrymen, you are at 
liberty to go below the water-line.” It was not long 
after this before I retired from the quarter-deck to the 
cock-pit; of course I saw no more of the action until 
the firing ceased, but I heard and felt much of its 
effects; for soon after I left the deck the firing com- 
menced on board the Guerriére, and was kept up al- 
most incessantly until about six o’clock when I heard a 
tremendous explosion from the opposing frigate. The 
effect of her shot seemed to make the Guerriére reel 
and tremble as though she had received the shock of 
an earthquake. 

Immediately after this, I heard a tremendous crash 


106 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


on deck and was told that the mizzen-mast was shot 
away. In afew moments afterward, the cock-pit was 
filled with wounded men. After the firing had ceased 
I went on deck and there beheld a scene which it would 
be difficult to describe: all the Guerriére’s masts were 
shot away and, as she had no sails to steady her, she 
lay rolling like a log in the trough of the sea. (Many of 
the men were employed in throwing the dead over- 
board. The decks had the appearance of a butcher’s 
slaughter-house; the gun tackles were not made fast 
and several of the guns got loose and were surging from . 
one side to the other. 

Some of the petty officers and seamen, after the 
action, got liquor and were intoxicated; and what with 
the groans of the wounded, the noise and confusion of 
the enraged survivors of the ill-fated ship rendered the 
whole scene a perfect hell. 


Setting the hulk of the Guerriére on fire, Captain 
Hull sailed for Boston with the captured crew. 
The tidings he bore were enough to amaze an 
American people which expected nothing of its 
navy, which allowed its merchant ships to rot at the 
wharves, and which regarded the operations of its 
armies with the gloomiest forebodings. New Eng- 
land went wild with joy over a victory so pecu- 
liarly its own. Captain Hull and his officers were 
paraded up State Street to a banquet at Faneuil 
Hall while cheering thousands lined the sidewalks. 
A few days earlier had come the news of the 


THE NAVY ON BLUE WATER 107 


surrender of Detroit, but the gloom was now dis- 
pelled. Americans could fight, after all. Popular 
toasts of the day were: 


OUR INFANT NAVY—We must nurture the young Her- 
cules in his cradle, if we mean to profit by the labors of 
his manhood. 

THE VICTORY WE CELEBRATE—An invaluable proof 
that we are able to defend our rights on the ocean. 


Handbills spread the news through the country, 
and artillery salutes proclaimed it from Carolina to 
the Wabash. Congress voted fifty thousand dol- 
lars as prize money to the heroes of the Constitution 
and medals to her officers. The people of New 
York gave them swords, and Captain Hull and 
Lieutenant Morris received pieces of plate from the 
patriots of Philadelphia. Federalists laid aside 
for the moment their opposition to the war and 
proclaimed that their party had founded and sup- 
ported the navy. The moral effect of the victory 
was out of all proportion to its strategic impor- 
tance. It was like sunshine breaking through a 
fog. Such rejoicing had been unknown, even in the 
decisive moments of the War of the Revolution. 
It served to show how deep-seated had been the 
American conviction that Britain’s mastery of the 
sea was like a spell which could not be broken. 


CHAPTER VI 
MATCHLESS FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS . 


It was soon made clear that the impressive victory 
over the Guerriére was neither a lucky accident nor . 
the result of prowess peculiar to the Constitution 
and her crew. Ship for ship, the American navy 
was better than the British. This is a truth which 
was demonstrated with sensational emphasis by 
one engagement after another. During the first 
eight«months of the war there were five such duels, 
and in every instance the enemy was compelled 
to strike his colors. In tavern and banquet hall 
revelers were still drinking the health of Captain 
Isaac Hull when the thrilling word came that the 
Wasp, an eighteen-gun ship or sloop, as the type 
was called in naval parlance, had beaten the Frolic 
in a rare fight. The antagonists were so evenly 
matched in every respect that there was no room 
for excuses, and on both sides were displayed such 


stubborn hardihood and a seamanship so dauntless 
108 


FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS 109 


as to make an Anglo-Saxon proud that these 
foemen were bred of a common stock. 

The Wasp had sailed from the Delaware on the 
13th of October, heading southeast to look fer Brit- 
ish merchantmen in the West India track. Her 


‘commander was Captain Jacob Jones, a name 


revived in modern days by a destroyer of the 
Queenstown fleet in the arduous warfare against 
the German submarines. Shattered by a torpedo, 
the Jacob Jones sank in seven minutes, and sixty- 
four of the officers and crew perished, doing their 
duty to the last, disciplined, unafraid, so proving 
themselves worthy of the American naval service 
and of the memory of the unflinching captain 
of 1812. 

The little Wasp ran into a terrific gale which 
blew her sails away and washed men overboard. 
But she made repairs and stood bravely after a 
British convoy which was escorted by the eighteen- 
gun brig Frolic, Captain Thomas Whinyates. The 
Frolic, too, had been battered by the weather, and 
the cargo ships had been scattered far and wide. 
The Wasp sighted several of them in the moonlight 
but, fearing they might be war vessels, followed 
warily until morning revealed on her leeward side 
the Frolic. Jacob Jones promptly shortened sail, 


110 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


which was the nautical method of rolling up one’s 
sleeves, and steered close to attack. 

It seemed preposterous to try to fight while the 
seas were still monstrously swollen and their crests 
were breaking across the decks of these vessels of 
less than five hundred tons burden. Wildly they 
rolled and pitched, burying their bows in the roar- 
ing combers. The merchant ships which watched 
this audacious defiance of wind and wave were hay- 
ing all they could do to avoid being swept or dis- 
masted. Side by side wallowed Wasp and Frolic, 
sixty yards between them, while the cannon rolled 
their muzzles under water and the gunners were 
blinded with spray. Britisher and Yank, each 
crew could hear the hearty cheers of the other as 
they watched the chance to ply rammer and sponge 
and fire when the deck lifted clear of the sea. 

Somehow the Wasp managed to shoot straight 
and fast. They were of the true webfooted breed 
in this hard-driven sloop-of-war, but there were no 
fair-weather mariners aboard the Frolic, and they 
hit the target much too often for comfort. Within 
ten minutes they had saved Captain Jacob Jones 
the trouble of handling sail, for they shot away his 
upper masts and yards and most of his rigging. 
The Wasp was a wreck aloft but the Frolic had 


FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS 111 


suffered more vitally, for as usual the American 
gun captains aimed for the deck and hull; and 
they had been carefully drilled at target practice. 
The British sailors suffered frightfully from this 
storm of grape and chain shot, but those’ who 
were left alive still fought inflexibly. It looked as 
though the Frolic might get away, for the masts 
of the Wasp were in danger of tumbling over 
the side. With this mischance in mind, Captain 
Jacob Jones shifted helm and closed in for a hand- 
to-hand finish. 

For a few minutes the two ships plunged ahead 
so near each other that the rammers of the Ameri- 
can sailors struck the side of the Frolic as they 
drove the shot down the throats of their guns. It 
was literally muzzle to muzzle. Then they crashed 
together and the Wasp’s jib-boom was thrust be- 
tween the Frolic’s masts. In this position the 
British decks were raked by a murderous fire 
as Jacob Jones trumpeted the order, “Boarders 
away!” Jack Lang, a sailor from New Jersey, 
scrambled out on the bowsprit, cutlass in his fist, 
without waiting to see if his comrades were with 
. him, and dropped to the forecastle of the Frolic. 
Lieutenant Biddle tried it by jumping on the bul- 
wark and climbing to the other ship as they crashed 


112 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


together on the next heave of the sea, but adoughty — 
midshipman, seeking a handy purchase, grabbed 
him by the coat tails and they fell back upon their 
own deck. Another attempt and Biddle joined 
Jack Lang by way of the bowsprit. These two 
thus captured the Frolic, for as they dashed aft the 
only living men on deck were the undaunted sailor 
at the wheel and three officers, including Captain 
Whinyates and Lieutenant Wintle, who were so 
severely wounded that they could not stand with- 
out support. They tottered forward and surren- 
dered their swords, and Lieutenant Biddle then 
leaped into the rigging and hauled the British 
ensign down. 

' Of the Frolic’s crew of one hundred and ten men 
only twenty were unhurt, and these had fied below 
to escape the dreadful fire from the Wasp. The 
gun deck was strewn with bodies, and the waves 
which broke over the ship swirled them to and fro, 
the dead and the wounded together. Not an 
officer had escaped death or injury. The Wasp 
was more or less of a tangle aloft but her hull was 
sound and only five of her men had been killed 
and five wounded. No sailors could have fought 
more bravely than Captain Whinyates and his 
British crew, but they had been overwhelmed in 


FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS 113 


three-quarters of an hour by greater skill, coolness, 
and judgment. 

No sea battle of the war was more brilliant than 
this, but Captain Jacob Jones was delayed in sail- 
ing home to receive the plaudits due him. His 
prize crew was aboard the Frolic, cleaning up the 
horrid mess and fitting the beaten ship for the 
voyage to Charleston, and the Wasp was standing 
by when there loomed in sight a towering three- 
decker — a British ship of the line — the Poictiers. 
The Wasp shook out her sails to make a run for 
it, but they had been cut to ribbons and she was 
soon overhauled. Now an eighteen-gun ship could 
not argue with a majestic seventy-four. Captain 
Jacob Jones submitted with as much grace as he 
could muster, and Wasp and Frolic were carried 
to Bermuda. The American crew was soon ex- 
changed, and Congress applied balm to the injured 
feelings of these fine sailormen by filling their 
pockets to the amount of twenty-five thousand 
dollars in prize money. 

It was only a week later that the navy vouch- 
safed an encore to a delighted nation. This time 
the sport royal was played between stately frigates. 
On the 8th of October Commodore Rodgers had 


taken his squadron out of Boston for a second 
8 


114 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


cruise. After four days at sea the United States was 
detached, and Captain Stephen Decatur ranged 
off to the eastward in quest of diversion. A fort- 
night of monotony was ended by a strange sail 
which proved to be the British thirty-eight-gun 
frigate Macedonian, newly built. Her commander, 
Captain Carden, had the highest opinion of his 
ship and crew, and one of his officers testified that 
“‘the state of discipline on board was excellent; in 
no British ship was more attention paid to gunnery, 
Before this cruise the ship had been engaged al- 
most every day with the enemy; and in time of 
peace the crew were constantly canna at the 
great guns.” 

The United States was a sister frigate of the 
Constitution, built from the same designs and there- 
fore more formidable than her British opponent as 
three is to two. Captain Carden had no misgiv- — 
ings, however, and instantly set out in chase of the 
American frigate. But he was unfortunate enough 
to pit himself against one of the ablest officers 
afloat, and his own talent was mediocre. The re- 
sult was partly determined by this personal equa- 
tion in an action in which the Macedonian was out- 
generaled as well as outfought. And again gun- 
nery was a decisive factor. Observers said that 


FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS 115 


the broadsides of the United States flamed with 
such rapidity that the ship looked as though she 
were on fire. 

Early in the fight Captain Carden bungled an 
opportunity to pass close ahead of the United 
States and so rake her with a destructive attack. 
Then rashly coming to close quarters, the Mace- 
donian was swept by the heavy guns of the Ameri- 
can frigate and reduced to wreckage in ninety 
minutes. The weather was favorable for the 
Yankee gun crews, and the war offered no more 
dramatic proof of their superbly intelligent train- 
ing. The Macedonian had received more than one 
hundred shot in her hull, several below the water 
line, one mast had been cut in two, and the others 
were useless. More than a hundred of her officers 
and men were dead or injured. The United States 
was almost undamaged, a few ropes and small spars 
were shot away, and only twelve of her men were 
on the casualty list. Captain Decatur rightfully 
boasted that he had as fine a crew as ever walked a 
deck, American sailors who had been schooled for 
the task with the greatest care. English opinion 
went so far as to concede this much: “As a dis- 
play of courage the character of our service was 
nobly upheld, but we would be deceiving ourselves 


116 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


were we to admit that the comparative expertness 
of the crews in gunnery was equally satisfactory. 
Now taking the difference of effect as given by 
Captain Carden, we must draw this conclusion — 
that the comparative loss in killed and wounded, 
together with the dreadful account he gives of the 
condition of his own ship, while he admits that the 
enemy’s vessel was in comparatively good order, 
must have arisen from inferiority in gunnery as 
well as in force.” 

Decatur sent the Macedonian to Newport as a 
trophy of war and forwarded her battle flag to 
Washington. It arrived just when a great naval 
ball was in progress to celebrate the capture of the 
Guerriére, whose ensign was already displayed from 
the wall. It was a great moment for the young 
lieutenant of the United States, who had been as- 
signed this duty, when he announced his mission 
and, amid the cheers of the President, the Cabinet, 
and other distinguished guests, proudly exhibited ‘ 
the flag of another British frigate to decorate 
the ballroom! 

Meanwhile the Constitution had returned to sea 
to spread her royals to the South Atlantic trades 
and hunt for lumbering British East-Indiamen. 
Captain Isaac Hull had gracefully given up the 


FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS 117 


command in favor of Captain William Bainbridge, 
who was one of the oldest and most respected 
officers of his rank and who deserved an opportu- 
nity to win distinction. Bainbridge had behaved 
heroically at Tripoli and was logically in line to 
take over one of the crack frigates. The sailors of 
the Constitution grumbled a bit at losing Isaac Hull 
but soon regained their alert and willing spirit as 
they comprehended that they had another first-rate 
‘old man” in William Bainbridge. Henry Adams 
has pointed out that the average age of Bainbridge, 
Hull, Rodgers, and Decatur was thirty-seven, while 
that of the four generals most conspicuous in the 
disappointments of the army, Dearborn, Wilkinson, 
William Hull, and Wade Hampton, was fifty-eight. 
The difference is notable and is mentioned for what 
it may be worth. 

Through the autumn of 1812 the frigate cruised 
beneath tropic suns, much of the time off the coast 
of Brazil. Today the health and comfort of the 
bluejacket are so scrupulously provided for in 
every possible way that a battleship is the stand- 
ard of perfection for efficiency in organization. 
Tt is amazing that in such a ship as the Constitution 
four hundred men could be cheerful and ready to 
fight after weeks and even months at sea. They 


118 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


were crowded below the water line, without prop- 
er heat, plumbing, lighting, or ventilation, each 
man being allowed only twenty-eight inches by 
eight feet of space in which to sling his hammock 
against the beams overhead. Scurvy and other 
diseases were rampant. As many as seventy of 
the crew of the Constitution were on the sick list 
shortly before she fought the Guerriére. The food 
was wholesome for rugged men, but it was limited 
solely to salt beef, hard bread, dried peas, cheese, 
pork, and spirits. 

Such conditions, however, had not destroyed the 
vigor of those hardy seamen of the Constitution 
when, on the 29th of December and within sight of 
the Brazilian coast, the lookout at the masthead 
sang out to Captain Bainbridge that a heavy ship 
was coming up under easy canvas. It turned out 
to be His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Java, Cap- 
tain Henry Lambert, who, like Carden, made the 
mistake of insisting upon a combat. His reasons 
were sounder than those of Dacres or Carden, how- 
ever, for the Java was only a shade inferior to the 
Constitution in guns and carried as many men. 
In every respect they were so evenly matched 
that the test of battle could have no aftermath 
of extenuation. 


FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS 119 


The Java at once hastened in pursuit of the 
American ship which drew off the coast as though 
in flight, the real purpose being to get clear of the 
neutral Brazilian waters. The Constitution must 
have been a picture to stir the heart and kindle the 
imagination, her black hull heeling to the pressure 
of the tall canvas, the long rows of guns frowning 
from the open ports, while her bunting rippled a 
glorious defiance, with a commodore’s pennant at 
the mainmast-head, the Stars and Stripes stream- 
ing from the mizzen peak and main-topgallant 
mast, and a Union Jack at thefore. The Java was 
adorned as bravely, and Captain Lambert had 
lashed an ensign in the rigging on the chance that 
his other colors might be shot away. 

The two ships began the fray at what they 
called long range, which would be about a mile, and 
then swept onward to pass on opposite tacks. It 
was the favorite maneuver of trying to gain the 
weather gage, and while they were edging to wind- 
ward a round shot smashed the wheel of the Con- 
stitution which so hampered her for the moment 
that Captain Lambert, handsomely taking ad- 
vantage of the mishap, let the Java run past his 
enemy’s stern and poured in a broadside which hit 
several of the Americanseamen. Both commanders 


120 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


displayed, in a high degree, the art of handling ships 
under sail as they luffed or wore and tenaciously 
jockeyed for position, while the gunners fought in 
the smoke that drifted between the frigates. 

At length Captain Lambert became convinced 
that he had met his master at this agile style of 
warfare and determined to come to close quarters 
before the Java was fatally damaged. Her masts 
and yards were crashing to the deck and the slaugh- 
ter among the crew was already appalling. Ma- 
rines and seamen gathered in the gangways and 
upon the forecastle head to spring aboard the Con- 
stitution, but Captain Bainbridge drove his ship 
clear very shortly after the collision and continued 
to pound the Java to kindling-wood with his broad- 
sides. The fate of the action was no longer in 
doubt. The British frigate was on fire, Captain 
Lambert was mortally wounded, and all her guns 
had been silenced. The Constitution hauled off 
to repair damages and stood back an hour later 
to administer the final blow. But the flag of 
the Java fluttered down, and the lieutenant in 
command surrendered. 

The Constitution had again crushed the enemy 
with so little damage to herself that she was ready 
to continue her cruise, with a loss of only nine 


~ displayed. ined 
under sail as: th ar iad on wore; 


jocke; ed.for posit m ; 
the ameke: the clpatees 


At Tenet aptaia Lambert 2 . 
thatshéchad met-his master at this) 
ir eam ame 

‘aiid to pence yd bone al wd 
bez : anng the crew was tet Po. 
vines and seamen gathered in the i 
upon the foreeastie head to spring 
stitution, but Captain: Boiwhei obs 


“ 


clear very shorily after the eollia 
to pound the Java to kindling- ie . 
sides..iThe fate of the action was = f 
doubt, The British frigate weal 
Lambert wasumertaDy weor ete a 
had beemhllenced, The S04 ion: 
to repair. damages and stood ba ck an: how 
to administer the final blow. ae 
Megiadpea i uitered down, ont the 


= 
bot 


= 
to. 


FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS 121 


killed and twenty-five wounded. The Java was a 
fine ship utterly destroyed, a sinking, dismasted 
hulk, with a hundred and twenty-four of her mén 
dead or suffering from wounds. It is significant to 
learn that during six weeks at sea they had fired 
but six practice broadsides, of blank cartridges, al- 
though there were many raw hands in the crew, 
while the men of the Constitution had been inces- 
santly drilled in firing until their team play was like 
that of a football eleven. There was no shooting 
atrandom. Under Hull and Bainbridge they had 
been taught their trade, which was to lay the gun 
on the target and shoot as rapidly as possible. 

For the diminutive American navy, the year of 
1812 came to its close with a record of success so 
illustrious as to seem almost incredible. It is more 
dignified to refrain from extolling our own exploits 
and to recall the effects of these sea duels upon the 
minds of the people, the statesmen, and the press 
of the England of that period. Their outbursts of 
wrathful humiliation were those of a maritime race 
which cared little or nothing about the course of 
the American war by land. Theirs was the salty 
tradition, virile and perpetual, which a century 
later and in a friendlier guise was to create a Grand 
Fleet which should keep watch and ward in the 


122 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


misty Orkneys and hold the Seven Seas safe against 
the naval power of Imperial Germany. Then, as 
now, the English nation believed that its armed 
ships were its salvation. . 

It is easier to understand, bearing this in mind, 
why after the fight of the Guerriére the London 
Times indulged in such frenzied lamentations 
as these: 


We witnessed the gloom which that event cast over 
high and honorable minds. . . . Never before in the 
history of the world did an English frigate strike to an 
American, and though we cannot say that Captain 
Dacres, under all circumstances, is punishable for this 
act, yet we do say there are commanders in the English 
navy who would a thousand times rather have gone 
down with their colors flying than to have set their 
fellow sailors so fatal an example. 


Good God! that a few short months should have so 
altered the tone of British sentiments! Is it true, or is 
it not, that our navy was accustomed to hold the 
Americans in utter contempt? Is it true, or is it not, 
that the Guerriére sailed up and down the American 
coast with her name painted in large characters on 
her sails in boyish defiance of Commodore Rodgers? 
Would any captain, however young, have indulged 
such a foolish piece of vain-boasting if he had not been 
carried forward by the almost unanimous feeling of his 
associates? 


FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS 123 


We have since sent out more line-of-battle ships and 
heavier frigates. Surely we must now mean to smother 
the American navy. A very short time before the cap- 
ture of the Guerriére an American frigate was an object 
of ridicule to our honest tars. Now the prejudice is 
actually setting the other way and great pains seems 
to be taken by the friends of ministers to prepare the 
public for the surrender of a British seventy-four to an 
opponent lately so much contemned. 


It was when the news reached England that the 
Java had been destroyed by the Constitution that 
indignation found a climax in the outcry of the 
Pilot, a foremost naval authority: 


The public will learn, with sentiments which we shall 
not presume to anticipate, that a third British frigate 
has struck toan American. Thisisan occurrence that 
ealls for serious reflection, — this, and the fact stated 
in our paper of yesterday, that Lloyd’s list contains 
notices of upwards of five hundred British vessels 
captured in seven months by the Americans. Five 
hundred merchantmen and three frigates! Can these 
statements be true; and can the English people hear 
them unmoved? Any one who would have predicted 
such a result of an American war this time last year 
would have been treated as a madman or a traitor. 
He would have been told, if his opponents had con- 
descended to argue with him, that long ere seven 
months had elapsed the American fiag would have 
been swept from the seas, the contemptible navy 
of the United States annihilated, and their maritime 


124 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


arsenals rendered a heap of ruins. Yet down to this” 
moment not a single American frigate has struck her 

flag. They insult and laugh at our want of enterprise 

and vigor. They leave their ports when they please 

and return to them when it suits their convenience; 

they traverse the Atlantic; they beset the West India 

Islands; they advance to the very chops of the Chan- 

nel; they parade along the coasts of South America; 

nothing chases, nothing intercepts, nothing engages 

them but to yield them triumph. 


It was to be taken for granted that England 
would do something more than scold about the 
audacity of the American navy. Even after the 
declaration of war her most influential men hoped 
that the repeal of the obnoxious Orders-in-Council 
might yet avert a solution of the American problem 
by means of the sword. There was hesitation to 
apply the utmost military and naval pressure, and 
New England was regarded with feelings almost 
friendly because of its opposition to an offensive 
warfare against Great Britain and an invasion 
of Canada. 

Absorbed in the greater issue against Napoleon, 
England was nevertheless aroused to more vigorous 
action against the United States and devised strong 
blockading measures for the spring of 1813. Un- 
able to operate against the enemy’s ships in force 


FRIGATES AND THEIR DUELS 125 


or to escape from ports which were sealed by vigi- 
lant squadrons, the American navy toa large extent 
was condemned to inactivity for the remainder of 
the war. Occasional actions were fought and merit 
was justly won, but there was nothing like the 
glory of 1812, which shone undimmed by defeat 
and which gave to the anrals of the nation one of 
its great chapters of heroic and masterful achieve- 
ment. It was singularly apt that the noble and 
victorious American frigates should have been 
called the Constitution and the United States. They 
inspired a new respect for the flag with the stripes 
and the stars and for all that it symbolized. 


CHAPTER VII 
“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 


THE second year of the war by sea opened bril- 
liantly enough to satisfy the American people, who 
were now in a mood to expect too much of their 
navy. In February the story of the Wasp and the 
Frolic was repeated by two ships of precisely the 
same class. The American sloop-of-war Hornet had 
sailed to South America with the Constitution and 
was detached to blockade, in the port of Bahia, the 
British naval sloop Bonne Citoyenne, which con- 
tained treasure to the amount of half a million 
pounds in specie. Captain James Lawrence of the 
Hornet sent in a challenge to fight, ship against 
ship, pledging his word that the Constitution would 
not interfere, but the British commander, perhaps 
mindful of his precious cargo, declined the invita- 
tion. Instead of this, he sensibly sent word to a 
great seventy-four at Rio de Janeiro, begging her 


to come and drive the pestiferous Hornet away. 
126 


“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 127 


The British battleship arrived so suddenly that 
Captain Lawrence was compelled to dodge and flee 
in the darkness. By a close shave he gained the 
open sea and made off up the coast. For several 
weeks the Hornet idled to and fro, vainly seeking 
merchant prizes, and then off the Demerara River 
on February 24, 1813, she fell in with the Brit- 
ish brig Peacock, that flew the royal ensign. The 
affair lasted no more than fifteen minutes. The 
Peacock was famous for shining brass work, spot- 
less paint, and the immaculate trimness of a yacht, 
but her gunnery had been neglected, for which rea- 
son she went to the bottom in six fathoms of water 
with shot-holes in her hull and thirty-seven of her 
crew put out of action. The sting of the Hornet 
had been prompt and fatal. Captain Lawrence 
had only one man killed and two wounded, and his 
ship was as good as ever. Crowding his prisoners 
on board and being short of provisions and water, 
he set sail for a home port and anchored in New 
York harbor. He was in time to share with Bain- 
bridge the carnival of salutes, processions, din- 
ners, addresses of congratulation, votes of thanks, 
swords, medals, prize money, promotion — every 
possible tribute of an adoring and grateful people. 

One of the awards bestowed upon Lawrence was 


128 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


the command of the frigate Chesapeake. Among 
seamen she was rated an unlucky ship, and Law- 
rence was confidently expected to break the spell. 
Her old crew had left her after the latest voyage, 
which met with no success, and other sailors were 
reluctant to join her. Privateering had attracted 
many of them, and the navy was finding it difficult 
to recruit the kind of men it desired. Lawrence 
was compelled to sign on a scratch lot, some Portu- 
guese, a few British, and many landlubbers. Given 
time to shake them together in hard service at sea, 
he would have madea smart crew of them no doubt, 
as Isaac Hull had done in five weeks with the men 
of the Constitution, but destiny ordered otherwise. 

In the spring of 1813 the harbor of Boston was 
blockaded by the thirty-eight-gun British frigate 
Shannon, Captain Philip Vere Broke, who had been 
in this ship for seven years. In the opinion of 
Captain Mahan, “his was one of those cases where 
singular merit as an officer and an attention to duty 
altogether exceptional had not yet obtained oppor- 
tunity for distinction. It would probably be safe _ 
to say that no more thoroughly efficient ship of her 
class had been seen in the British navy during the 
twenty years’ war with France.” 

Captain Broke was justly confident in his own 


“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 129 


leadership and in the efficiency of a ship’s company, 
which had retained its identity of organization 
through so many years of his personal and energetic 
supervision. Indeed, the captain of the British 
flagship on the American station wrote: “The 
Shannon’s men were trained and understood gun- 
nery better than any men I ever saw.” Every 
morning the men were exercised at training the 
guns and in the afternoon in the use of the broad- 
sword, musket, and pike. Twice each week the 
crew fired at targets with great guns and musket- 
ry and the sailor who hit the bull’s eye received 
a pound of tobacco. Without warning Captain 
Broke would order a cask tossed overboard and 
then suddenly order some particular gun to sink 
it. In brief, the Shannon possessed those qualities 
which had been notable in the victorious American 
frigates and which were lamentably deficient in 
the Chesapeake. 

Lawrence’s men were unknown to each other and 
to their officers, and they had never been to sea 
together. The last draft came aboard, in fact, just 
as the anchor was weighed and the Chesapeake 
stood out to meet her doom. Even most of her 
officers were new to the ship. They had no chance 


whatever to train or handle the rabble between 
9 


130 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


decks. Now Captain Broke had been anxious to 
fight this American frigate as matching the Shan- 
non in size and power. He had already addressed 
to Captain Lawrence a challenge whose wording 
was a model of courtesy but which was provoca- 
tive to the last degree. A sailor of Lawrence’s . 
heroic temper was unlikely to avoid such a combat, 
stimulated as he was by the unbroken success of 
his own navy in duels between frigates. 

On the first day of June, Captain Broke boldly 
ran into Boston harbor and broke out his flag in de- 
fiance of the Chesapeake which was riding at anchor 
as though waiting to go to sea. Instantly accept- 
ing the invitation, Captain Lawrence hoisted colors, 
fired a gun, and mustered his crew. In this cere- 
monious fashion, as gentlemen were wont to meet 
with pistols to dispute some point of honor, did the 
Chesapeake sail out to fight the waiting Shannon. 
The news spread fast and wide and thousands of 
people, as though they were bound to the theater, 
hastened to the heights of Malden, to Nahant, and 
to the headlands of Salem and Marblehead, in hopes 
of witnessing this famous sight. They assumed that 
victory was inevitable. Any other surmise was 
preposterous. 

These eager crowds were cheated of the spectacle, 


“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 131 


however, for the Chesapeake bore away to the east- 
ward after rounding Boston Light and dropped hull 
down until her sails were lost in the summer haze, 
with the Shannon in her company as if they steered 
for some rendezvous. They were firing when last 
seen and the wind bore the echo of the guns, faint 
and far away. It was most extraordinary that 
three weeks passed before the people would believe 
the tidings of the disaster. A pilot who had left 
the Chesapeake at five o’clock in the afternoon re- 
ported that he was still near enough an hour later 
to see the two ships locked side by side, that a 
fearful explosion had happened aboard the Chesa- 
peake, and that through a rift in the battle smoke 
he had beheld the British flag flymg above the 
American frigate. 

This report was confirmed by a fishing boat from | 
Cape Ann and by the passengers in a coastwise 
packet, but the public doubted and still hoped 
until the newspapers came from Halifax with an 
account of the arrival of the Chesapeake as prize 
to the Shannon and of the funeral honors paid to 
the body of Captain James Lawrence. The tragic 
defeat came at an extremely dark moment of the 
war when almost every expectation had been dis- 
appointed and the future was clouded. Richard 


182 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 
Rush, the American diplomatist, wrote, recalling 


the event: 


I remember — what American does not! — the first 
rumor of it. I remember the startling sensation. I 
remember at first the universal incredulity. I re- 
member how the post-offices were thronged for suc- 
cessive days by anxious thousands; how collections of 
citizens rode out for miles on the highway, accosting 
the mail to catch something by anticipation. At last, 
when the certainty was known, I remember the public 
gloom; funeral orations and badges of mourning be- 
spoke it. “Don’t give up the ship” —the dying 
words of Lawrence — were on every tongue. 


It was learned that the Chesapeake had followed 
the Shannon until five o’clock, when the latter 
luffed and showed her readiness to begin fighting. 
Lawrence was given the choice of position, with a 
westerly breeze, but he threw away this advantage, 
preferring to trust to his guns with a green crew 
rather than the complex and delicate business of 
maneuvering his ship under sail. He came bowl- 
ing straight down at the Shannon, luffed in his 
turn, and engaged her at a distance of fifty yards. 
The breeze was strong and the nimble American 
frigate forged ahead more rapidly than Lawrence 
expected, so that presently her broadside guns had 
ceased to bear. 


“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 133 


_ While Lawrence was trying to slacken headway 
and regain the desired position, the enemy’s shot 
disabled his headsails, and the Chesapeake came 
up into the wind with canvas all a-flutter. It was 
a mishap which a crew of trained seamen might 
have quickly mended, but the frigate was taken 
aback — that is, the breeze drove her stern fore- 
most toward the Shannon and exposed her to a 
deadly cannonade which the American gunners 
were unable to return. The hope of salvation lay 
in getting the ship under way again or in boarding 
the Shannon. It was in this moment that the 
battle was won and lost, for every gun of the Brit- 
ish broadside was sweeping the American deck 
diagonally from stern to bow, while the marines in 
the tops of the Shannon picked off the officers and 
seamen of the Chesapeake, riddling them with mus- 
ket balls. It was like the swift blast of a hurricane. 
Lawrence fell, mortally wounded. Ludlow, his 
first lieutenant, was carried below. The second 
lieutenant was stationed between decks, and the 
third forsook his post to assist those who were 
carrying Lawrence below tothe gun deck. Notan 
officer remained on the spar deck and not a living 
man was left on the quarter deck when the Chesa- 
peake drifted against the Shannon after four minutes 


134 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


of this infernal destruction. As the ships collided, 
Captain Broke dashed forward and shouted for 
boarders, leading them across to the American_ 
deck. No more than fifty men followed him and 
three hundred Yankee sailors should have been 
able to wipe the party out, but most of the Chesa- 
peake crew were below, and, demoralized by lack 
of discipline and leadership, they refused to come 
up and stand the gaff. Brave resistance was made 
by the few who remained on deck and a dozen more 
followed the second lieutenant, George Budd, as 
he rushed up to rally a forlorn hope. 

It was a desperate encounter while it lasted, and 
Captain Broke was slashed by a saber as he led a 
charge to clear the forecastle. Yet two minutes 
sufficed to clear the decks of the Chesapeake, and 
the few visible survivors were thrown down the 
hatchways. The guns ceased firing, and the crew 
below sent up a message of surrender. The frig- 
ates had drifted apart, leaving Broke and his sea- 
men to fight without reinforcement, but before they 
came together again the day was won. This was 
the most humiliating phase of the episode, that a 
handful of British sailors and marines should have 
carried an American frigate by boarding. 

It must not be inferred that the Chesapeake 


“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 135 


inflicted no damage during the fifteen minutes of 
thisfamousengagement. Thirty-seven of the Brit- 
ish boarding party were killed or wounded and 
the American marines — “‘leather-necks”’ then and 
“devil-dogs” now — fought in accordance with 
the spirit of a corps which had won its first laurels 
in the Revolution. Such broadsides as the Chesa- 
peake was able to deliver were accurately placed 
and inflicted heavy losses. The victory cost the 
Shannon eighty-two men killed and wounded, 
while the American frigate lost one hundred and 
forty-seven of her crew, or more than one-third of 
her complement. Even in defeat the Chesapeake 
had punished the enemy far more severely than the 
Constitution had been able to do. 
Lawrence lay in the cockpit, or hospital, when 
his men began to swarm down in confusion and 
leaderless panic. Still conscious, he was aware that 
disaster had overtaken them and he muttered 
again and again with his dying breath, “Don’t 
give up the ship. Blow her up.” Thus passed 
to an honorable fame an American naval officer of 
great gallantry and personal charm. Although he 
brought upon his country a bitter humiliation, the 
fact that he died sword in hand, his last thought 
for his flag and his service, has atoned for his faults 


136 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


of rashness and overconfidence. The odds were 
against him, and ill-luck smashed his chance of 
overcoming them. He was no more disgraced 
than Dacres when he surrendered the Guerriére 
to a heavier ship, or than Lambert, dying on 
his own deck, when he saw the colors of the Java 
hauled down. 

The Shannon took her prize to Halifax, and when 
the news came back that the captain of the Chesa- 
peake lay dead in a British port, the bronzed sea- 
dogs of the Salem Marine Society resolved to fetch 
his body home in a manner befitting hisend. Cap- 
tain George Crowninshield obtained permission 
from the Government to sail with a flag of truce 
for Halifax, and he equipped the brig Henry for the 
sad and solemn mission. Her crew was picked 
from among the shipmasters of Salem, some of 
them privateering skippers, every man of them a 
proven deep-water commander. It was such a 
crew as never before or since took a vessel out of 
an American port. When they returned to Salem 
with the remains of Captain Lawrence and Lieu- 
tenant Ludlow, the storied old seaport saw their 
funeral column pass through the quiet and crowded 
streets. The pall-bearers bore names to thrill 
American hearts today — Hull, Stewart, Bain- 


“DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 137 


bridge, Blakely, Creighton, and Parker, all captains 
of the navy. A Salem newspaper described the 
ceremonies simply and with an unconscious pathos: 


The day was unclouded, as if no incident should be 
wanting to crown the mind with melancholy and woe 
— the wind from the same direction and the sea pre- 
sented the same unruffled surface as was exhibited to 
our anxious view when on that memorable first day of 
July we saw the immortal Lawrence proudly conduct- 
ing his ship to action. ... The brig Henry contain- 
ing the precious relics lay at anchor in the harbor. 
They were placed in barges and, preceded by a long 
procession of boats filled with seamen uniformed in 
blue jackets and trousers, with a blue ribbon on their 
hats bearing the motto of “Free Trade and Sailors’ 
Rights,” were rowed by minute strokes to the end of 
India Wharf, where the bearers were ready to receive 
the honored dead. From the time the boats left the 
brig until the bodies were landed, the United States 
brig Ratilesnake and the brig Henry alternately fired 
minute guns. ... On arriving at the meeting-house 
the coffins were placed in the centre of the church by 
the seamen who rowed them ashore and who stood dur- 
ing the ceremony leaning upon them in an attitude of 
mourning. The church was decorated with cypress 
and evergreen, and the names of Lawrence and Ludlow 
appeared in gilded letters on the front of the pulpit. 


It was wholly reasonable that the exploit of the 
Shannon should arouse fervid enthusiasm in the 


138 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


breast of every Briton. The wounds inflicted by 
Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge still rankled, but 
they were now forgotten and the loud British 
boastings equaled all the tales of Yankee brag. A 
member of Parliament declared that the “action 
which Broke fought with the Chesapeake was in 
every respect unexampled. It was not — and he 
knew it was a bold assertion which he made — 
to be surpassed by any other engagement which 
graced the naval annals of Great Britain.” Ad- 
miral Warren was still in a peevish humor at the 
hard knocks inflicted on the Royal Navy when he 
wrote, in congratulating Captain Broke: “At this 
critical moment you could not have restored to the 
British naval service the preéminence it has always 
preserved, or contradicted in a more forcible man- 
ner the foul aspersions and calumnies of a con- 
ceited, boasting enemy than by the brilliant act 
you have performed. The relation of such an 
event restores the history of ancient times and 
will do more good to the service than 1t 1s possible 
to conceive.” 

Captain Broke was made a baronet and received 
other honors and awards which he handsomely 
deserved, but the wound he had suffered at the 
head of his boarding party disabled him for further 


-“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 139 


sea duty. If the influence of the Constitution and 
the United States was far-reaching in improving the 
efficiency of the American navy, it can be said also 
that the victory of the Shannon taught the British 
service the value of rigorous attention to gunnery 
and a highly trained and disciplined personnel. 

American chagrin was somewhat softened a few 
weeks later when two very small ships, the Enter- 
prise and the Boxer, met in a spirited combat off 
the harbor of Portland, Maine, like two bantam 
cocks, and the Britisher was beaten in short order 
on September 5, 1813. The Enterprise had been a 
Yankee schooner in the war with Tripoli but had 
been subsequently altered to a square rig and had 
received more guns and men to worry the enemy’s 
privateers. The brig-of-war was a kind of vessel 
heartily disliked by seamen and now vanished from 
blue water. The immortal Boatswain Chucks of 
Marryat proclaimed that “they would certainly 
damn their inventor to all eternity” and that “‘their 
common, low names, ‘ Pincher,’ ‘Thrasher,’ ‘Boxer,’ 
‘Badger,’ and all that sort, are quite good enough 
for them.” 

Commanding the Enterprise was Captain Wil- 
liam Burrows, twenty-eight years old, who had 
seen only a month of active service in the war. 


140 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Captain Samuel Blyth of the Boxer had worked his 
way up to this unimportant post after many years 
of arduous duty in the British navy. He might 
have declined a tussel with the Enterprise for his 
crew numbered only sixty-six men against a hun- 
dred and twenty, but he nailed his colors to the 
mainmast and remarked that they would never 
come down while there was any life in him. 

The day was calm, the breeze fitful, and the little 
brigs drifted about each other until they lay with- 
in pistol shot. Then both loosed their broadsides, 
while the sailors shouted bravely, and both captains 
fell, Blyth killed instantly and Burrows mortally 
hurt but crying out that the flag must never be 
struck. There was no danger of this, for the Enter- 
prise raked the British brig through and through 
until resistance was hopeless. Captain Blyth was 
as good as his word. He did not live to see his en- 
sign torn down. Great hearts in little ships, these 
two captains were buried side by side in a church- 
yard which overlooks Casco Bay, and there you 
may read their epitaphs today. 

The grim force of circumstances was beginning 
to alter the naval policy of the United States. Not- 
withstanding the dramatic successes, her flag was 
almost banished from the high seas by the close of 


“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 141 


the year 1813. The frigates Constellation, United 
States, and Macedonian were hemmed in port by 
the British blockade; the Adams and the Constitu- 
tion were laid up for repairs; and the only for- 
midable ships of war which roamed at large were 
the President, the Essex, and the Congress. The 
smaller vessels which had managed to slip seaward 
and which were of such immense value in destroy- 
ing British commerce found that the system of con- 
voying merchantmen in fleets of one hundred or 
two hundred sail had left the ocean almost bare of 
prizes. It was the habit of these convoys, how- 
ever, to scatter as they neared their home ports, 
every skipper cracking on sail and the devil take 
the hindmost — a failing which has survived unto 
this day, and many a wrathful officer of an Ameri- 
can cruiser or destroyer in the war against Ger- 
many could heartily echo the complaint of Nelson 
when he was a captain, “behaving as all convoys 
that ever I saw did, shamefully ill, and parting 
company every day.” 

This was the reason why American naval vessels 
and privateers left their own coasts and dared to 
rove in the English Channel, as Paul Jones had 
done in the Ranger a generation earlier. It was 
discovered that enemy merchantmen could be 


142 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


snapped up more easily within sight of their own 
shores than thousands of miles away. First to 
emphasize this fact in the War of 1812 was the 
naval brig Argus, Captain William H. Allen, which 
made a summer crossing and cruised for a month, 
on end in the Irish Sea and in the chops of the 
Channel with a gorgeous recompense for her shame- _ 
less audacity. England scolded herself red in the 
face while the saucy Argus captured twenty-seven 
ships and took her pick of their valuable cargoes. 
Her course could be traced by the blazing hulls that 
she left in her wake and this was how the British 
gun brig Pelican finally caught up with her. 
Although the advantage of size and armament 
was with the Pelican, it was to be expected that 
the Argus would prove more than a match for 
her. The American commander, Captain Allen, had 
played a distinguished part in several of the most 
famous episodes of the navy. As third lieutenant 
of the Chesapeake, in 1807, he had picked up a live 
coal in the cook’s galley, held it in his fingers, and 
so fired the only gun discharged against the Leopard 
in that inglorious surprise and surrender. As first 
officer of the frigate United States he received credit 
for the splendid gunnery which had overwhelmed the 
Macedonian, and he enjoyed the glory of bringing 


A FRIGATE OF 1812 UNDER SAIL 


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el the Chesapeake, in 1807, be had pieke 


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shored than thousands of Wiles “awe r: 
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naval’ brig Argus, Captain Williain ¥ 
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“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 148 


the prize to port. It was as a reward of merit 
that he was given command of the Argus. Alas, 
in this fight off the coast of Wales he lost both his 
ship and his life, and England had scored again. 
There was no ill-luck this time — nothing to plead 
in excuse. The American brig threw away a 
chance of victory because her shooting was amaz- 
ingly bad, and instead of defending the deck with 
pistol, pike, and musket, when the boarders came 
over the bow the crew lowered the flag. 

It was an early morning fight, on August 14, 
1813, in which Captain Allen had his leg shot off 
within five minutes after the two brigs had en- 
gaged. He refused to be taken below, but loss of 
blood soon made him incapable of command, and 
presently his first lieutenant was stunned by a 
grapeshot which grazed his scalp. The ship was 
well sailed, however, and gained a position for rak- 
ing the Pelican in deadly fashion, but the shot went 
wild and scarcely any harm was done. The Brit- 
ish captain chose his own range and methodically 
made a wreck of the Argus in twenty minutes of 
smashing fire, working around her at will while not 
a gun returned his broadsides. Then he sheered 
close and was prepared to finish it on the deck of 
the Argus when she surrendered with twenty-three 


144. THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA ‘= 
} 


of her crew out of action. The Pelican was so little 
punished that only two men were killed. The 
officer left in command of the Argus laid this un- 
happy conclusion to “the superior size and metal 
of our opponent, and the fatigue which the crew 
underwent from a very rapid succession of prizes.” 
There were those on board who blamed it to the 
casks of Oporto wine which had been taken out of 
the latest prize and which the sailors had secretly 
tapped. Honesty is the best policy, even in dealing 
with an enemy. The affair of the Argus and the 
Pelican was not calculated to inflate Yankee pride. 

To balance this, however, came two brilliant 
actions by small ships. The new Peacock, named 
for the captured British brig, under Captain Lewis 
Warrington, stole past the blockade of New York. 
Off the Florida coast on the 29th of April she sighted 
a convoy and attacked the escort brig of eighteen 
guns, the Epervier. In this instance the behavior 
of the American vessel and her crew was supremely 
excellent and not a flaw could be found. They 
hulled the British brig forty-five times and made 
a shambles of her deck and did it with the loss of 
one man. 

Even more sensational was the last cruise of the 


Wasp, Captain Johnston Blakely, which sailed 


“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 145 


from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in May and 
roamed the English Channel to the dismay of 
all honest British merchantmen. The brig-of-war 
Reindeer endeavored to put an end to her career 
but nineteen minutes sufficed to finish an action in 
which the Wasp slaughtered half the British crew 
and thrice repelled boarders. This was no light 
task, for as Michael Scott, the British author of 
Tom Cringle’s Log, candidly expressed it: 


In the field, or grappling in mortal combat on the 
blood-slippery deck of an enemy’s vessel, a British sol- 
dier or sailor is the bravest of the brave. No soldier 
or sailor of any other country, saving and excepting 
those damned Yankees, can stand against them. . 

I don’t like Americans. I never did and never shall 
like them. I have no wish to eat with them, drink 
with them, deal with or consort with them in any way; 
but let me tell the whole truth, — nor fight with them, 
were it not for the laurel to be acquired by over- 
coming an enemy so brave, determined, and alert, 
and every way so worthy of one’s steel as they have 
always proved. 


Refitting in a French port, the dashing Blakely 
took the Wasp to sea again and encountered a con- 
voy in charge of a huge, lumbering ship of the line. 
Nothing daunted, the Wasp flitted in among the 


timid merchant ships and snatched a valuable prize 
10 


146 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


laden with guns and military stores. Attempting 
to bag another, she was chased away by the indig- 
nant seventy-four and winged it in search of other 
quarry until she sighted four strange sails. Three 
of them were British war brigs in hot pursuit of a 
Yankee privateer, and Johnston Blakely was de- 
lighted to play a hand in the game. He selected 
his opponent, which happened to be the Avon, and 
overtook her in the darkness of evening. Before a 
strong wind they foamed side by side, while the 
guns flashed crimson beneath the shadowy gleam 
of tall canvas. Thus they ran for an hour and a 
half, and then the Avon signaled that she was 
beaten, with five guns dismounted, forty-two men 
dead or wounded, seven feet of water in the hold, 
the magazine flooded, and the spars and rigging 
almost destroyed. 

Blakely was about to send a crew aboard when 
another hostile brig, forsaking the agile Yankee 
privateer, came up to help the Avon. The Wasp 
was perfectly willing to take on this second adver- 
sary, but just then a third British ship loomed 
through the obscurity, and the ocean seemed a 
trifle overpopulated for safety. Blakely ran off 
before the wind, compelled to abandon his prize. 
The Avon, however, was so badly battered that she 


“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 147 


went to the bottom before the wounded seamen 
could be removed from her. Thence the Wasp 
went to Madeira and was later reported as spoken 
near the Cape Verde Islands, but after that she 
vanished from blue water, erased by some tragic 
fate whose mystery was never solved. To the port 
of missing ships she carried brave Blakely and his 
men after a meteoric career which had swept her 
from one victory to another. 

Of the frigates, only three saw action during the 
last two years of the war, and of these the President 
and the Essex were compelled to strike to superior 
forces of the enemy. The Constitution was lucky 
enough to gain the open sea in December, 1814, and 
fought her farewell battle with the frigate Cyane 
and the sloop-of-war Levant on the 20th of Febru- 
ary. In this fight Captain Charles Stewart showed 
himself a gallant successor to Hull and Bainbridge. 
Together the two British ships were stronger than 
the Constitution, but Stewart cleverly hammered 
the one and then the other and captured both. 
Honor was also due the plucky little Levant, which, 
instead of taking to her heels, stood by to assist her 
larger comrade like a terrier at the throat of a wolf. 
It is interesting to note that the captains, English 
and American, had received word that peace had 


148 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


been declared, but without official confirmation 
they preferred to ignore it. The spirit which lent 
to naval warfare the spirit of the duel was too strong 
to let the opportunity pass. 

The President was a victim of a continually in-: 
creased naval strength by means of which Great 
Britain was able to strangle the seafaring trade 
and commerce of the United States as the war drew 
toward its close. Captain Decatur, who had taken 
command of this frigate, remarked “the great ap- 
prehension and danger” which New York felt, in 
common with the entire seaboard, and the anx- 
iety of the city government that the crew of the 
ship should remain for defense of the port. Coast- 
wise navigation was almost wholly suspended, 
and thousands of sloops and schooners feared to 
undertake voyages to Philadelphia, Baltimore, 
or Charleston. Instead of these, canvas-covered 
wagons struggled over the poor highways in con- 
tinuous streams between New England and the 
Southern coast towns. This awkward result of 
the blockade moved the sense of humor of the 
Yankee rhymsters who placarded the wagons 
with such mottoes as “Free Trade and Oxen’s 
Rights” and parodied Ye Mariners of England 
with the lines: 


“DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” 149 


Ye wagoners of Freedom 

Whose chargers chew the cud, 

Whose wheels have braved a dozen years 
The gravel and the mud; 

Your glorious hawbucks yoke again 

To take another jag, 

And scud through the mud 

Where the heavy wheels do drag, 

Where the wagon creak is long and low 
And the jaded oxen lag. 


Columbia needs no wooden wails, 

No ships where billows swell; 

Her march is like a terrapin’s, 

Her home is in her shell. 

To guard her trade and sailor’s rights, 
_In woods she spreads her flag. 


Such ribald nonsense, however, was unfair to anavy 
which had done magnificently well until smoth- 
ered and suppressed by sheer weight of numbers. 
It was in January, 1815, that Captain Decatur final- 
ly sailed out of New York harbor in the hope of 
taking the President past the blockading division 
which had been driven offshore by a heavy north- 
east gale. - The British ships were struggling back 
to their stations when they spied the Yankee 
frigate off the southern coast of Long Island. It 
was a stern chase, Decatur with a hostile squadron 
at his heels and unable to turn and fight because 


150 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


' the odds were hopeless. The frigate Endymion 
was faster than her consorts and, as she came up 
alone, the President delayed to exchange broad- 
sides before fleeing again with every sail set. Her 
speed had been impaired by stranding as she came 
out past Sandy Hook, else she might have out- 
footed the enemy. But soon the Pomone and the 
Tenedos, frigates of the class of the Shannon 
and the Guerriére, were inthe hunt. Decatur was 
cornered, but his guns were served until a fifth of 
the crew were disabled, the ship was crippled, and 
a force fourfold greater than his own was closing in 
to annihilate him at its leisure. “I deemed it my 
duty to surrender,” said he, and a noble American 
frigate, more formidable than the Constitution, was 
added to the list of the Royal Navy. 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE LAST CRUISE OP THE ESSEX 


Tue last cruise of the Essex frigate, although an 
ill-fated one, makes a story far less mournful than 
that of the President. She was the first man-of- 
war to display the American flag in the wide waters 
of the Pacific. Her long and venturesome voyage 
is still regarded as one of the finest achievements of 
the navy, and it made secure the fame of Captain 
David Porter. The Essex has a peculiar right to 
be held in affectionate memory, apart from the 
very gallant manner of her ending, because into 
her very timbers were builded the faith and pa- 
triotism of the people of the New England seaport 
which had framed and launched her as a loan to 
the nation in an earlier time of stress. 

At the end of the eighteenth century France had 
been the maritime enemy more hotly detested than 
England, and unofficial war existed with the “Ter- 


rible Republic.” This situation was foreshadowed 
151 


152 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


as early as 1798 by James McHenry, Secretary of 
War, when he indignantly announced to Congress: 
‘To forbear under such circumstances from taking 
naval and military measures to secure our trade, 
defend our territories in case of invasion, and to 
prevent or suppress domestic insurrection would 
be to offer up the United States a certain prey to 
France and exhibit to the world a sad spectacle of 
national degradation and imbecility.” 
Congress thereupon resolved to build two dozen 
ships which should teach France to mend her 
manners on the high seas, but the Treasury was too 
poor to pay the million dollars which this modest 
navy was to cost. Subscription lists were there- 
fore opened in several shipping towns, and private 
capital advanced the funds to put the needed 
frigates afloat. The Esser was promptly contri- 
buted by Salem, and the advertisement of the 
master builder is brave and resonant reading: 


To Sons of Freedom! All true lovers of Liberty of 
your Country! Step forth and give your assistance 
in building the frigate to oppose French insolence and 
piracy. Let every man in possession of a white oak 
tree be ambitious to be foremost in hurrying down the 
timber to Salem where the noble structure is to be 
fabricated to maintain your rights upon the seas 
and make the name of America respected among the 


THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ESSEX 153 


nations of the world. Your largest and longest trees 
are wanted, and the arms of them for knees and rising 
timber. Four trees are wanted for the keel which 
altogether will measure 146 feet in length and hew 
sixteen inches square. 


The story of the building of the Essex is that of 
an aroused and reliant people. The great timbers 
were cut in the wood lots of the towns near by and 
were hauled through the snowy streets of Salem 
on ox-sleds while the people cheered them as they 
passed. The Essex was a Salem ship from keel to 
truck. Her cordage was made in three ropewalks. 
Captain Jonathan Haraden, the most famous Sa- 
lem privateersman of the Revolution, made the 
rigging for the mainmast in his loft. The sails 
were cut from duck woven for the purpose in the 
mill on Broad Street and the ironwork was forged 
by Salem shipsmiths. When the huge hempen 
cables were ready to be conveyed to the frigate, the 
workmen hoisted them upon their shoulders and in 
procession marched to the music of fife and drum. 
In 1799, six months after the oak timbers had been 
standing trees, the Essez slid from thestocksintothe 
harbor of old Salem. She was the handsomest and 
fastest American frigate of her day and when turned 
over to the Government, she cost what seemed at 


134 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 
that day the very considerable amount of seventy- 
five thousand dollars. . . . 

Peace was patched up with France, however, 
and the Essex was compelled to pursue more hum- 
drum paths, now in the Indian Ocean and again 
with the Mediterranean squadron, until war with 
England began in 1812. It was intended that Cap- 
tain Porter should rendezvous with the Constitu- 
tion and the Hornet in South American waters for a 
well-planned cruise against British commerce, but 
other engagements detained Bainbridge, notably 
his encounter with the Jara, and so they missed 
each other by a thousand miles or so. Since he 
had no means of communication, it was characteris- 
tic of Porter to conclude to strike out for himself 
instead of wandering about in an uncertain search 
for his friends. 

Porter conceived the bold plan of rounding the 
Horn and playing havoc with the British whaling 
fieet. This adventure would take him ten thou- 
sand miles from the nearest American port, but he 
reckoned that he could capture provisions enough 
to feed his crew and supplies to refit the ship. As 
a raid there was nothing to match this cruise until 
the Alabama ran amuck among the Yankee clippers 
and whaling barks half a century later. It was 


THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ESSEX 155 


the wrong time of year to brave the foul weather 
of Cape Horn, however, and the Essex was battered 
and swept by one furious gale after another. But 
at last she won through, stout ship that she was, 
and her weary sailors found brief respite in the har- 
bor of Valparaiso on March 14, 1813. Thence Por- 
ter headed up the coast, disguising the trim frigate 
so that she looked like a lubberly, high-pooped 
Spanish merchantman. 

The luck of the navy was with the American 
captain for, as he went poking about the Galapagos 
Islands, he surprised three fine, large British whal- 
ing ships, all carrying guns and too useful to de- 
stroy. To one of them, the Georgiana, he shifted 
more guns, put a crew of forty men aboard under 
Lieutenant John Downes, ran up the American 
flag, and commissioned his prize as acruiser. The 
other two he also manned — and now behold him, 
if you please, sailing the Pacific with a squadron of 
four good ships! Soon he ran down and captured 
two British letter-of-marque vessels, well armed 
and in fighting trim, and in a trice he had not a 
squadron but a fleet under his command, seven 
ships in all, mounting eighty guns and carrying 
three hundred and forty men and eighty prisoners. 
Two of these prizes he discovered to be crammed 


156 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA ~— 


to the hatches with cordage, paint, tar, canvas, 
and fresh provisions. The list could not have been 
more acceptable if Captain David Porter him- 
self had signed the requisition in the New York 
Navy Yard. 

Lieutenant Downes was now sent off iain te 
himself, and so well did he profit by his captain’s 
example and precepts that in a little while he had 
bagged a squadron of his own, three ships with 
twenty-seven guns and seventy-five men. When 
he rejoined the flagship in a harbor of the mainland, 
Porter rewarded him by calling his cruiser the 
Essex, Junior, promoting him to the rank of com- 
mander, and increasing his armament. They then 
resumed cruising in two squadrons, finding more 
British ships and sending them into the neutral 
harbor of Valparaiso or home to the United States 
with precious cargoes of whale oil and bone. With- 
in a few months he swept the Southern Pacific al- 
most clean of British merchantmen, whalers, and 
privateers. Winter coming on, Porter then sailed 
to the pleasant Marquesas Islands and laid the 
Essex up for a thorough overhauling. The enemy 
had furnished all needful supplies and even the 
money to pay the wages of the officers and crew. 

Fit for sea again, the Essex and the Essex, Junior, 


THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ESSEX 157 
betook themselves to Valparaiso where they re- 
ceived information that the thirty-six-gun frigate 
Phebe of the British navy was earnestly looking 
forthem. She had been sent out from England to 
proceed to the northwest American coast and de- 
stroy the fur station at the mouth of the Colum- 
bia River. At Rio de Janeiro Captain Hillyar had 
heard reports of the ravages of the Esser and he 
considered it his business to hunt down this defiant 
Yankee. To make sure of success, he took the 
sloop-of-war Cherub along with him and, dou- 
bling the Horn, they made straight for Valparaiso. 
David Porter got wind of the pursuit but assumed 
that the Phebe was alone. He made no attempt 
to avoid a meeting but on the contrary rather 
courted a fight with his old friend Hillyar, whom he 
had known socially on the Mediterranean station. 
For an officer of Porter’s temper and training the 
capture of British whalers was a useful but by no 
means glorious employment. He believed the real 
vocation of a frigate of the American navy was to 
engage the enemy. 

The Phebe and the Cherub sailed into the Chilean 
roadstead in February, 1814, and found the Esser 
there. As Captain Hillyar was passing in to seek 
an anchorage, the mate of a British merchantman 


158 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA > 


climbed aboard to tell him that the Essex was un- 
prepared for attack and could be taken with ease. 
Her officers had given a ball the night before in 
honor of the Spanish dignitaries of Valparaiso, 
and the decks were still covered with awnings and 
gay with bunting and flags. Reluctant to forego 
such a tempting opportunity, Captain Hillyar ran 
in and luffed his frigate within a few yards of the 
Essex. To his disappointed surprise, the Ameri- 
can fighting ship was ready for action on the in- 
stant. Though the punctilious restraints of a neu- 
tral port should have compelled them to delay bat- 
tle, Porter was vigilant and took no chances. The 
liberty parties had been recalled from shore, the 
decks had been cleared, the gunners were sent to 
quarters with matches lighted, and the boarders 
were standing by the hammock nettings with cut- 
lasses gripped. Making the best of this unexpected 
turn of events, the English captain shouted a greet- 
ing to David Porter and politely conveyed his 
compliments, adding that his own ship was also 
ready for action. So close were the two frigates 
at this moment that the jib-boom of the Phebe 
hung over the bulwarks of the Essex, and Porter 
called out sharply that if so much as a rope was 
touched he would reply with a broadside. The 


THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ESSEX 159 
urbane Captain Hillyar, perceiving his disadvan- 
tage, exclaimed, “‘I had no intention of coming so 
near you. I am very sorry indeed.” With that 
he moved his ship to a respectful distance. Later 
he had a chat with Captain Porter ashore and, 
when asked if he intended to maintain the neutral- 
ity of the port, made haste to protest, “Sir, you 
have been so careful to observe the rules that I feel 
myself bound in honor to do the same.” 

After a few days the Phebe and the Cherub left 
the harbor and watchfully waited outside, enforc- 
ing a strict blockade and determined to render the 
Essex harmless unless she should choose to sally 
out and fight. David Porter was an intrepid but 
not areckless sailor. He had the faster frigate but 
he had unluckily changed her battery from the long 
guns to the more numerous but shorter range car- 
ronades. He was not afraid to risk a duel with the 
Phebe even with this handicap in armament, but 
the sloop-of-war Cherub was a formidable vessel for 
her size and the Essex, Junior, which was only a 
converted merchantman, was of small account in 
a hammer-and-tongs action between naval ships. 

For his part, Captain Hillyar had no intention of 
letting the Yankee frigate escape him. “He was 
an old disciple of Nelson, ”’ observes Mahan, “‘fully 


160 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


imbued with the teaching that the achievement of 
success and not personal glory must dictate action. 
Having a well established reputation for courage 
and conduct, he intended to leave nothing to the 
chances of fortune which might decide a combat 
between equals. He therefore would accept no 
provocation to fight without the Cherub. His 
duty was to destroy the Essex with the least 
possible loss.” 

Porter endured this vexatious situation for six 
weeks and then, learning that other British frigates 
were on his trail, determined to escape to the open 
sea. This decision involved waiting for the most 
favorable moment of wind and weather, but Porter 
found his hand forced on the 28th of March by a 
violent southerly gale which swept over the ex- 
posed bay of Valparaiso and dragged the Essex 
from her anchorage. One of her cables parted 
while the crew struggled to get sail on her. As she 
drifted seaward, Porter decided to seize the emer- 
gency and take the long chance of running out to 
windward of the Phebe and the Cherub. Hethere- 
fore cut the other cable, and the Essex plunged into 
the wind under single-reefed topsails to claw past 
the headland. Just as she was about to clear it, 
a whistling squall carried away the maintopmast. 


THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ESSEX 161 


This accident was a grave disaster, for the disabled 
frigate was now unable either to regain a refuge in 
the bay or to win her way past the British ship. 

As a last resort Captain Porter turned and ran 
along the coast, within pistol shot of it, far inside 
the three-mile limit of neutral water, and came to 
an anchor about three miles north of the city. 
Captain Hillyar had no legal right to molest him, 
but in his opinion the end justified the means and 
he resolved to attack. Deliberately the Phebe 
and Cherub selected their stations and, late in this 
stormy afternoon, bombarded the crippled Essex 
without mercy. Porter with his carronades was 
unable to repay the damage inflicted by the broad- 
sides of the longer guns, nor could he handle his 
ship to close in and retrieve the day in the desper- 
ate game of boarding. He tried this ultimate ven- 
ture, nevertheless, and let go his cables. But the 
ship refused to move ahead. Her sheets, tacks, 
and halliards had been shot away. The canvas 
was hanging loose. 

Porter’s guns were by no means silent, however, 
even in this hopeless situation, and few crews have 
died harder or fought more grimly than these sea- 
men of the Esser. Among them was a little mid- 


shipman, wounded but still at his post, a mere 
It 


162 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


child of thirteen years whose name was David 
Farragut. His fortune it was to link those early 
days of the American navy with a period half a 
century later when he won his renown as the 
greatest of American admirals. 

In many a New England seaport were told the 
tales of this last fight of the Essex until they be- 
came almost legendary — of Seaman John Ripley, 
who cried, after losing his leg, “‘Farewell, boys, I 
can be of no more use to you,’ and thereupon flung 
himself overboard out of a bow port; of James 
Anderson, who died encouraging his comrades to 
fight bravely in defense of liberty; of Benjamin 
Hazen, who dressed himself in a clean shirt and 
jerkin, told his messmates that he could never sub- 
mit to being taken prisoner by the English and 
forthwith leaped into the sea and was drowned. 
Such incidents help us to descry, amid the smoke 
and slaughter of that desperate encounter, the 
spirit of the gallant David Porter. Never was 
the saying, “It’s not the ships but the men in 
them,”’ better exemplified. To Porter was granted 
greatness in defeat, a lot that comes to few. 

For two hours he and his men endured such 
dreadful punishment as not many ships have 
suffered. Again he attempted to work his way 


THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ESSEX 163 


nearer the enemy, until he had not enough men 
left unhurt to serve the guns or to haul at the 
pitifully splintered spars. In the last extremity, 
Porter made an effort to destroy his vessel and to 
save her people from captivity by letting the Esser 
drive ashore. A kedge anchor was let go, and a 
dozen sailors tramped around the capstan while 
the chantey man piped up a tune, but again for- 
tune seemed against him for the hawser snapped, 
and the wind began to blow the frigate into deeper 
water. What happened then is best recalled in 
the simple words of Captain David Porter himself: 


I now sent for the officers of division to consult them 
and what was my surprise to find only acting Lieu- 
tenant Stephen Decatur M’Knight remaining... . I 
was informed that the cockpit, the steerage, the ward- 
room, and the berth deck could contain no more 
wounded, that the wounded were killed while the sur- 
geons were dressing them, and that if something was 
not speedily done to prevent it, the ship would soon 
sink from the number of shot holes in her bottom. On 
sending for the carpenter he informed me that all his 
crew had been killed or wounded. 

The enemy, from the impossibility of reaching him 
with our carronades and the little apprehension that 
was excited by our fire, which had now become much 
slackened, was enabled to take aim at us as at a target; 
his shot never missed our hull and my ship was cut up 
in a manner which was perhaps never before witnessed; 


mo Om 
s) 


164 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


in fine, I saw no hope of saving her, and at twenty 
minutes after 6 p.m. I gave the painful order to strike 
the colors. Seventy-five men including officers were 
all that remained of my whole crew after the action, 
many of them severely wounded, some of whom have 
since died. 

The enemy still continued his fire and my brave, 
though unfortunate companions were still falling about 
me. [ directed an opposite gun to be fired to show 
them we intended no further resistance but they did 
not desist. Four men were killed at my side and 
others at different parts of the ship. I now believed 
he intended to show us no quarter, that it would be as 
well to die with my flag flying as struck, and was on the 
point of again hoisting it when about ten minutes after 
hauling down the colors he ceased firing. 

We have been unfortunate but not disgraced 
— the defense of the Essex has not been less honorable 
to her officers and crew than the capture of an equal 
force; and I now consider my situation less unpleasant 
than that of Captain Hillyar, who in violation of every 
principle of honor and generosity, and regardless of the 
rights of nations, attacked the Essex in her crippled 
state within pistol shot of a neutral shore, when for 
six weeks I had daily offered him fair and honorable 
combat on terms greatly to his advantage. 


The behavior of Captain Hillyar after the sur- 
render, however, was most humane and courteous, 
and lapse of time has dispelled somewhat of the 
bitterness of the American opinion of him. If he 


THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ESSEX 166 


was not as chivalrous as his Yankee foemen had 
expected, it must be remembered that there was a 
heavy grudge and a long score to pay in the havoc 
wrought among British merchantmen and whalers 
and that in those days the rights of South American 
neutrals were rather lightly regarded. 


CHAPTER IX 
VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN 


SPECTACULAR as were the exploits of the American 
navy on the sea, they were of far less immediate 
consequence in deciding the destinies of the war 
than were the naval! battles fought on fresh water 
between hastily improvised squadrons. On Lake 
Erie Perry’s victory had recovered a lest empire 
and had made the West secure against invasion. 
Macdonough’s handful of little vessels on Lake 
Champlain compelled the retreat of ten thousand 
British veterans of Wellington’s campaigns who 
had marched down from Canada with every prom- 
ise of crushing American resistance. This was the 
last and most formidable attempt on the part of 
the enemy to conquer territory and to wrest a deci- 
sion by means of a sustained offensive. Its collapse 
marked the beginning of the end, and such events 
as the capture of Washington and the battle of 


New Orleans were in the nature of episodes. 
166 


VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN _ 167 


That September day of 1814, when Macdon- 
ough won his niche in the naval hall of fame, 
was also the climax and the conclusion of the 
long struggle of the American armies on the 
northern frontier, a confused record of defeat, 
vacillation, and crumbling forces, which was re- 
deemed towards the end by troops who had 
learned how to fight and by new leaders who 
restored the honor of the flag at Chippawa and 
Lundy’s Lane. Although the ambitious attempts 
against Canada, so often repeated, were so much 
wasted effort until the very end, they ceased to 
be inglorious. The tide turned in the summer 
of 1814 with the renewal of the struggle for the 
Niagara region where the British had won a 
foothold upon American soil. 

In command of a vigorous and disciplined Ameri- 
can army was General Jacob Brown, that stout- 
hearted volunteer who had proved his worth when 
the enemy landed at Sackett’s Harbor. He was 
not a professional soldier but his troops had been 
trained and organized by Winfield Scott who was 
now a brigadier. After two years of dismal re- 
verses, the United States was learning how to wage 
war. Incompetency was no longer the badge of 
high military rank. A general was supposed to 


168 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


know something about his trade and to have a 
will of his own. 

With thirty-five hundred men, Jacob Brown 
made a resolute advance to find and join batile 
with the British forces of General Riall which gar- 
risoned the forts of St. George’s, Niagara, Erie, 
Queenston, and Chippawa. Early in the morning 
of July 3, 1814, the American troops in two divi- 
sions crossed the river and promptly captured Fort 
Erie. They then pushed ahead fifteen miles until 
they encountered the British defensive line on the 
Chippawa River where it flows into the Niagara. 

The field was like a park, with open, grassy 
spaces and a belt of woodland which served as a 
green curtain to screen the movements of both 
armies. Riall boldly assumed the offensive, al- 
though he was aware that he had fewer men. His 
instructions intimated that liberties might be taken 
with the Americans which would seem hazardous 
“to a military man unacquainted with the char- — 
acter of the enemy he had to contend with, or with 
the events of the last two campaigns on that fron- 
tier.” The deduction was unflattering but very 
much after the fact. 

The British attack was unlooked for. It was 
the Fourth of July and in celebration Winfield 


VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN 169 


Scott had given his men the best dinner that the 
commissary could supply and was marching them 
into a meadow in the cool of the summer afternoon 
for drill and review. The celebration, however, 
was interrupted by firing and confusion among the 
militia who happened to be in front, and Scott 
rushed his brigade forward to take the brunt of the 
heavy assault. General Jacob Brown rode by at 
a gallop, waving his hat and cheerily shouting, 
“You will have a battle.” He was hurrying to 
bring up his other forces, but meanwhile Scott’s 
column crossed a bridge at the double-quick and 
faced the enemy’s batteries. 

Exposed, taken by surprise, and outnumbered, 
Winfield Scott and his regiments were nevertheless 
equal to the occasion. A battalion was sent to 
cover one flank in the dense woodland, while the 
main body drove straight for the columns of British 
infantry and then charged with bayonets at sixty 
paces. The American ranks were steady and un- 
broken although they were pelted with musketry 
fire, and they smashed a British counter-charge 
by three regiments before it gained momentum. 
Handsomely fought and won, it was not a decisive 
battle and might be called no more than a skirmish 
but its significance was highly important, for at 


170 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Chippawa there was displayed a new spirit in the 
American army. 

Riall retreated with his red-coated seca toa 
stronger line at Queenston, while Jacob Brown was 
sending anxious messages to Commodore Chauncey 
begging him to use his fleet in codperation and so 
break the power of the enemy in Upper Canada. 
“For God’s sake, let me see you,” he implored. 
But again the American ships on Lake Ontario 
failed to seize an opportunity, and in this instance 
Chauncey’s inactivity dismayed not only General 
Brown but also the Government at Washington. 
The fleet remained at Sackett’s Harbor with ex- 
cuses which appeared inadequate: certain changes 
were being made among the officers and crews, and 
again “‘the squadron had been prevented being 
earlier fitted for sea in consequence of the delay in 
obtaining blocks and iron-work.” Chauncey sub- 
sequently fell ill, which may have had something 
to do with his lapse of energy. The whole career of 
this naval commander on Lake Ontario had dis- 
appointed expectations, even though the Secretary 
had commended his “‘zeal, talent, constancy, cour- 
age, and prudence of the highest order.” The 
trouble was that Chauncey let slip one chance after 
another to win the control of Lake Ontario in 


VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN 171 


pitched battle. Always too intent on building 
more ships instead of fighting with those he had, 
he is therefore not remembered in the glorious 
companionship of Perry and Macdonough. 

This failure to act at the moment when Jacob 
Brown was so valiantly endeavoring to wrest from 
the British the precious Niagara peninsula was 
responsible for the desperate and inconclusive 
battle of Lundy’s Lane. Winfield Scott frankly 
blamed the unsuccessful result upon the freedom 
with which the British troops and supplies were 
moved on Lake Ontario. For ten days Jacob 
Brown had remained in a painful state of suspense 
and perplexity, until finally the word came that 
nobody knew when the American fleet would sail. 
As he had feared, the British command, able to 
move its troops unmolested across the lake, 
planned to attack him in the rear and to cut 
his communications on the New York side of the 
Niagara River. For this purpose two enemy brigs 
were filled with troops and were sent over to Fort 
Niagara with more to follow. 

It was to parry this threat that Brown moved 
his forces and brought about the clash at Lundy’s 
Lane. “As it appeared,” he explained, “that the 
enemy with his increased strength was about to 


172 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


avail himself of the hazard under which our baggage 
and stores were on our side of the Niagara, I con- 
ceived the most effectual method of recalling him 
from the object was to put myself in motion to- 
wards Queenston. General Scott with his bri- 
gade were accordingly put in march on the road 
leading thither.” 

The action was fought about a mile back from 
the torrent of the Niagara, below the Falls, where 
the by-road known as Lundy’s Lane joined the 
main road running parallel with the river. Here 
Scott’s column came suddenly upon a force of 
British redcoats led by General Drummond. Scott 
hesitated to attack, because the odds were against 
his one brigade, but, fearing the effect of a retreat 
on the divisions behind him, he sent word to Brown 
that he would hold his ground and try to turn the 
enemy’s left toward the Niagara. It waslatein the 
day and the sun had almost set. Gradually Scott 
forced the British wing back, and Brown threw in 
reinforcements until the engagement became gener- 
al. The fight continued furious even after darkness 
fell and never have men employed in the business of 
killing each other shown courage more stubborn. 
Both sides were equally determined and they fought 
until exhaustion literally compelled a halt. 


VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN 173 


Later in the evening fresh troops were hurled in 
on both sides, and they were at it again with the 
same impetuosity. A small hill, over which ran 
Lundy’s Lane, was the goal the Americans fought 
for. They finally stormed it, “‘in so determined a 
manner,” reported the enemy, “‘that our artillery 
men were bayoneted in the act of loading and the 
muzzles of the enemy’s guns were advanced within 
a few yards of ours.” Back and forth flowed the 
tide of ‘battle in bloody waves, until midnight. 
Then sullenly and in good order the Americans 
retired three miles to camp at Chippawa. Next 
day the enemy resumed the position and held 
it unattacked. 

It is fair to call Lundy’s Lane a drawn battle. 
The casualties were something more than eight 
hundred for each side, and the troops engaged were 
about twenty-five hundred Americans and a like 
number of British. Both the shattered columns 
soon retired behind strong defenses. General Drum- 
mond led the British troops into camp at Niagara 
Falls, and General Ripley, in temporary command 
of the American brigades, Scott and Brown having 
been wounded, occupied the unfinished works of 
Fort Erie, on the Canadian side, just where the 
waters of Lake Erie enter the Niagara River. 


174 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


The British determined to bombard these walls 
and intrenchments with heavy guns and then carry 
them by infantry assault. But this plan failed 
disastrously. On the 15th of August the British 
charged in three columns the bastions and batteries 
only to be savagely repulsed at every point with 
a loss of nine hundred men killed, wounded, or 
prisoners, while the defenders had only eighty-five 
casualties. Then Drummond settled down to be- 
siege the place and sucéeeded in making it so 
uncomfortable that Jacob Brown, now recovered 
from his wound, organized a sortie in force which 
was made on the 17th of September. In the action 
which followed, the British batteries were over- 
whelmed and the American militia displayed 
magnificent steadiness and valor. Jacob Brown 
proudly informed the Governor of New York that 
“the militia of New York have redeemed their 
character — they behaved gallantly. Of those 
called out by the last requisition, fifteen hundred 
have crossed the state border to our support. This 
reinforcement has been of immense importance to 
us; it doubled our effective strength, and their good 
conduct cannot but have the happiest effect upon 
our nation.” 

This bold stroke ended the Niagara campaign. 


VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN = 175 


The British fell back, and the American army was 
in no condition for pursuit. In ten weeks Jacob 
Brown had fought four engagements without de- 
feat and, barring the battle of New Orleans, his 
brief campaign was the one operation of the land 
war upon which Americans could look back with 
any degree of satisfaction. 

The scene now shifted to Lake Champlain. The 
main work was the building up of an army to resist 
the menacing preparations for a British invasion 
from Montreal. Among the new American gener- 
als who had gained promotion by merit instead of 
favor was George Izard, trained in the military 
schools of England and Prussia, and an aide to 
Alexander Hamilton during his command of the 
army of the United States. Izard had been sent to 
Plattsburg in May, 1814, on the very eve of the 
great British campaign, and found everything in a 
deplorable state of unreadiness and inefficiency. 
While he was manfully struggling with these diffi- 
culties, Secretary Armstrong directed him to send 
four thousand of his men to the assistance of 
Jacob Brown on the Niagara front. General Izard 
obediently and promptly set out, although the de- 
fense of Lake Champlain was thereby deprived 
of this large body of troops. The expedition was 


176 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


almost barren of results, however, and at a time 
when every trained soldier was needed to oppose 
the march of the British veterans, Izard was at 
Fort Erie, idle, waiting to build winter quarters 
and writing to the War Department: “I confess 
I am greatly embarrassed. At the head of the 
most efficient army the United States have pos- 
sessed during this war, much must be expected of 
me; and yet I can discern no object which can be 
achieved at this point worthy of the risk which will 
attend its attempt.” 

Izard had already predicted that the withdrawal 
of his forces from Plattsburg would leave north- 
eastern New York at the mercy of the British and 
he spoke the truth. No sooner had his divisions 
started westward than the British army, ten thou- 
sand strong, under General Prevost, crossed the 
frontier and marched rapidly toward the Saranac 
River and then straight on to Plattsburg. Posses- 
sion of this trading town the British particularly 
desired because through it passed an enormous 
amount of illicit traffic with Canada. Both Izard 
and Prevost agreed in the statement that the 
British army was almost entirely fed on supplies 
drawn from New York and Vermont by way of 
Lake Champlain. “Two thirds of the army in 


VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN 177 


Canada are supplied with beef by American con- 
tractors,”” wrote Prevost, and there were not 
enough highways to accommodate the herds of 
cattle which were driven across the border. 

To protect this source of supply by conquering 
the region was the task assigned the splendid army 
of British regulars who had fought under Welling- 
ton. The conclusion of the Peninsular campaign 
had released them for service in America, and Eng- 
land was now able for the first time to throw her 
military strength against the feeble forces of the 
United States. It was announced as the intention 
of the British Government to take and hold the 
lakes, from Champlain to Erie, as territorial waters 
and a permanent barrier. To oppose the large 
and seasoned army which was to effect these proj- 
ects, there was an American force of only fifteen 
hundred men, led by Brigadier General Alexander 
Macomb. All he could do was to try to hold the 
defensive works at Plattsburg and to send forward 
small skirmishing parties to annoy the British 
army which advanced in solid column, without 
taking the trouble to deploy. 

On the 6th of September Sir George Prevost with 
his army reached Plattsburg and encamped just 
outside the town. From aridge the British leader 


12 


178 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


beheld the redoubts, strong field works, and block- 
houses, and at anchor in the bay the little Ameri- 
can fleet of Commodore Thomas Macdonough. To 
Prevost it looked like a costly business to attempt 
to carry these defenses by assault and he therefore 
decided to await the arrival of the British ships of 
Captain George Downie. A combined attack by 
land and sea, he believed, should find no difficulty 
in wiping out American resistance. . 

Such was the situation and the weighty respon- 
sibility which confronted Macdonough and his sail- 
ors. It was the most critical moment of the war. 
With a seaman’s eye for defense Macdonough met 
it by stationing his vessels in a carefully chosen 
position and prepared with a seaman’s foresight 
for every contingency. Plattsburg Bay is about 
two miles wide and two long and lies open to the 
southward, with a cape called Cumberland Head 
bounding it on the east. It was in this sheltered 
water that Macdonough awaited attack, his ships 
riding about a mile from the American shore bat- 
teries. These guns were to be captured by the 
British army and turned against him, according to 
the plans of General Prevost, who was urging Cap- 
tain Downie to hasten with his fleet and undertake 
a joint action, for, as he said, “it is of the highest 


VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN 179 


importance that the ships, vessels, and gunboats of 
your command should combine a codperation with 
the division of the army under my command. I 
only wait for your arrival to proceed against Gen- 
eral Macomb’s last position on the south bank 
of the Saranac.” 

These demands became more and more insistent, 
although the largest British ship, the Confiance, had 
been launched only a few days before and the me- 
chanics were still toiling night and day to fit her for 
action. She wasa formidable frigate, of the size of 
the American Chesapeake, and was expected to be 
more than a match for Macdonough’s entire fleet. 
Captain Downie certainly expected the support of 
the army, which he failed to receive, for he clearly 
stated his position before the naval battle. “When 
the batteries are stormed and taken possession of 
by the British land forces, which the commander of 
the land forces has promised to do at the moment 
the naval action commences, the enemy will be 
obliged to quit their position, whereby we shall 
obtain decided advantage over them during the 
confusion. I would otherwise prefer fighting them 
on the lake and would wait until our force is in an 
efficient state but I fear they would take shelter up 
the lake and would not meet me on equal terms.” 


180 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Compelled to seek and offer battle in Platts- 
burg Bay, the British vessels rounded Cumberland 
Head on the morning of the 11th of September and 
hove to while Captain Downie went ahead in a 
boat to observe the American position. He per- 
ceived that Macdonough had anchored his fleet in 
line in this order: the brig Eagle, twenty guns, the 
flagship Saratoga, twenty-six guns, the schooner 
Ticonderoga, seven guns, and the sloop Preble, 
seven guns. There was also a considerable squad- 
ron of little gunboats, or galleys, propelled by oars 
and mounting one gun. Opposed to this force was 
the stately Confiance, with her three hundred men 
and thirty-seven guns, such a ship as might have 
dared to engage the Constitution on blue water, 
and the Chub, Iinnet, and Finch, much like Mac- 
donough’s three smaller vessels, besides a flotilla 
of the tiny, impudent gunboats which were like 
so many hornets. 

Macdonough was a youngster of twenty-eight 
__ years to whom was granted this opportunity denied 
the officers who had grown gray in the service. The 
navy, which was also very young, had set its own 
stamp upon him, and his advancement he had 
won by sheer ability. Self-reliant and indomitable, 
like Oliver Hazard Perry, he had wrestled with 


VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPILAIN 181 


obstacles and was ready to meet the enemy in spite 
of them. His fame among naval men outshines 
Perry’s, and he is rated as the greatest fighting 
sailor who flew the American flag until Farragut 
surpassed them all. 

The battle of Plattsburg Bay was contested 
straight from the shoulder with little chance for 
such evolutions as seeking the weather gage or 
wearing ship. With one fleet at anchor, as Nelson 
demonstrated at the Nile, the proper business of 
the other was to drive ahead and try to break the 
line or turn an end of it. This Captain Downie 
proceeded to attempt in a brave and highly skillful 
manner, with the Confiance leading into the bay 
and proposing to smash the Eagle with her first 
broadsides. The wind failed, however, and the 
British frigate dropped anchor within close range 
of the Saratoga, which displayed Macdonough’s 
pennant, and pounded this vessel so accurately 
that forty American seamen, or one-fifth of the 
crew, were struck down by the first blast of the 
British guns. 

Meanwhile the Linnet had reached her assigned 
berth and fought the American Eagle so success- 
fully that the latter was disabled and had to leave 

the line. To balance this the Chub was so badly 


182 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


damaged that she drifted helpless among the Ameri- 
can ships and was compelled to haul down her 
colors. The Finch committed a blunder of sea- 
manship and by failing to keep close enough to 
the wind, which soon died away, she finally went 
aground and took no part in the battle. The Preble 
was driven from her anchorage and ran ashore un- 
der the Plattsburg batteries, and the Ticonderoga 
played no heavier part than to beat off the little 
British galleys. 

The decisive battle was therefore fought by four 
ships, the American Saratoga and Eagle, and the 
British Confiance and Linnet. It was then that 
Macdonough acquitted himself as a man who did 
not know when he was beaten. The Confiance, 
which must have towered like a ship of the line, — 
had so cruelly mauled the Saratoga that she seemed — 
doomed to be blown out of water. So many of his 
gunners were killed by the double-shotted broad- 
sides that Macdonough jumped from the quarter- 
deck to take a hand himself and encourage the 
survivors. He was sighting a gun when a round - 
shot cut the spanker boom, and a fragment of the 
heavy spar knocked him senseless. 

Recovering his wits, however, he returned to his 
gun. But another shot tore off the head of the — 


agrov ube nn praia no sent in 
was driven from héAah § 


5 nO hoavrer gare ee ath 
British galleys. 

The decisive battle was thereforete 
ships, the American Saratoga and E 
British Confiance and Léinnetomal 
Macdonough acquitted himsel 
not*know when he was beateny 
which must have towered dike: o 
‘ had so cruelly mauled the Se 
“oomedto be blown ont of 
gurners’ were killed by the « n D t 
_sides that Macdonough jompedetnan 
~ deck te ‘take*a hand himse it a 
purvivors. He. was schting : 
cul cut (he BOUOMOCDKMy 2h 


“" oft oho ge 


ship 


VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN 183 


gun captain and flung it in Macdonough’s face 
with such force that he was hurled across the deck. 
At length all but one of the guns along the side 
exposed to the Confiance had been smashed or dis- 
mounted, and this last gun broke its fastening 
bolts, leaped from its carriage with the heavy recoil, 
and plunged into the main hatch. Silenced, shot 
through and through, her decks strewn with dead, 
the Saratoga might then have struck her colors with 
honor. But Macdonough had not begun to fight. 
Prepared for such an emergency, he let go a stern 
anchor, cut his bow cable, and “‘ winded” or turned 
his ship around so that her other side with its un- 
injured row of guns was presented to the Confiance. 
Captain Downie had by this time been killed, and 
the acting commander of the British flagship en- 
deavored to execute the same maneuver, but the 
Confiance was too badly crippled to be swung about. 
While she floundered, the Saratoga reduced her to 
submission. One of the surviving officers stated 
that “the ship’s company declared they would 
no longer stand to their quarters nor could the 
officers with their utmost exertions rally them.” 
The ship was sinking, with more than a hundred 
ragged holes in her hull and fivescore men dead 
or hurt. Fifteen minutes later the plucky Linnet 


184 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


surrendered after a long and desperate duel with 
the Eagle. The British galleys escaped from the 
bay under sail and oar because no American ships 
were fit to chase them, but the Royal Navy had 
ceased to exist on Lake Champlain. For more 
than two hours the battle had been fought with 
a bulldog endurance not often equaled in the grim 
pages of naval history. And more nearly than 
any other incident of the War of 1812 it could be 
called decisive. 

The American victory made the position of Pre- 
vost’s army wholly untenable. With the control of 
Lake Champlain in Macdonough’s hands, the Brit- 
ish line of communication would be continually 
menaced. For the ten thousand veterans of Well- 
ington’s campaigns there was nothing to do but 
retreat, nor did they linger until they had marched 
across the Canada border. Though the way had 
lain open before them, they had not fought a battle, 
but were turned out of the United States, evicted, 
one might say, by a few small ships manned by 
several hundred American sailors. As Perry had 
regained the vast Northwest for his nation so, 
more momentously, did Macdonough avert from 
New York and New England a tide of invasion 
which could not otherwise have been stemmed. 


CHAPTER X 
PEACE WITH HONOR 


THE raids of the British navy on the American sea- 
coast through the last two years of the war were 
so many efforts to make effective the blockade 
which began with the proclamation of December, 
1812, closing Chesapeake and Delaware bays. 
Successive orders in 1813 closed practically all the 
seaports from New London, Connecticut, to the 
Florida boundary, and the last sweeping proclama- 
tion of May, 1814, placed under strict blockade 
“all the ports, harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, 
outlets, islands, and seacoasts of the United States.” 
It was the blockade of ports of the Middle States 
which caused such widespread ruin among mer- 
chants and shippers and which finally brought the 
Government itself to the verge of bankruptcy. 
The first serious alarm was caused in the spring 
of 1813 by the appearance of a British fleet, under 


command of Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren and 
185 


186 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Rear-Admiral George Cockburn, in the Chesapeake 
and Delaware bays. Apparently it had not oc- 
curred to the people of the seaboard that the war 
might make life unpleasant for them, and they had 
undertaken no measures of defense. Unmolested, 
Cockburn cruised up Cheapeake Bay to the mouth 
of the Susquehanna in the spring of 1813 and estab- 
lished a pleasant camp on an island from which 
five hundred sailors and marines harried the coun- 
try at their pleasure, looting and burning such 
prosperous little towns as Havre de Grace and Fred- 
ericktown. The men of Maryland and Virginia 
proceeded to hide their chattels and to move their 
families inland. Panic took hold of these proud 
and powerful commonwealths. Cockburn had no 
scruples about setting the torch to private houses, 
“‘to cause the proprietors who had deserted them 
and formed part of the militia which had fled to 
the woods to understand and feel what they were 
liable to bring upon themselves by building forts 
and acting toward us with so much useless ran- 
cor.” Though Cockburn was an officer of the 
British navy, he was also an unmitigated ruffian 
in his behavior toward non-combatants, and his 
own countrymen could not regard his career with 
satisfaction. 


PEACE WITH HONOR 187 


Admiral Warren had more justification in at- 
tacking Norfolk, which had a navy yard and forts 
and was therefore frankly belligerent. Unluckily 
for him the most important battery was manned by 
a hundred sailors from the Constellation and fifty 
marines. Seven hundred British seamen tried to 
land in barges, but the battery shattered three 
of the boats with heavy loss of life. Somewhat 
ruffled, Admiral Warren decided to go elsewhere 
and made a foray upon the defenseless village of 
Hampton during which he permitted his men to 
indulge in wanton pillage and destruction. Part of 
his fleet then sailed up to the Potomac and created 
a most distressing hysteria in Washington. The 
movement was a feint, however, and after frighten- 
ing Baltimore and Annapolis, the ships cruised and 
blockaded the bay for several months. 

In September of the following year another 
British division harassed the coast of Maine, first 
capturing Eastport and then landing at Belfast, 
Bangor, and Castine, and extorting Jarge ransoms 
in money and supplies. New England was wildly 
alarmed. In a few weeks all of Maine east of the 
Penobscot had been invaded, conquered, and for- 
mally annexed to New Brunswick, although two 
counties alone might easily have furnished twelve 


188 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA. 


thousand fighting men to resist the small parties of 
British sailors who operated in leisurely security. 
The people of the coastwise towns gave up their 
sheep and bullocks to these rude trespassers, cut 
the corn and dug the potatoes for them, handed 
over all their powder and firearms, and agreed to 
finish and deliver schooners that were on the stocks. 

Cape Cod was next to suffer, for two men-of-war 
levied contributions of thousands of dollars from 
Wellfleet, Brewster, and Eastham, and robbed 
and destroyed other towns. Farther south another 
fleet entered Long Island Sound, bombarded Ston- 
ington, and laid itinruins. The pretext for all this 
havoc was a raid made by a few American troops 
who had crossed to Long Point on Lake Erie, 
May 15, 1814, and had burned some Canadian 
mills and a few dwellings. The expedition was 
promptly disowned by the American Government 
as unauthorized, but in retaliation the British navy 
was ordered to lay waste all towns on the Atlantic 
coast which were assailable, sparing only the lives 
of the unarmed citizens. 

Included in the British plan of campaign for 
1814 was a coastal attack important enough to 
divert American efforts from the Canadian frontier. 
This was why an army under General Ross was 


PEACE WITH HONOR 189 


loaded into transports at Bermuda and escorted by 
a fleet to Chesapeake Bay. The raids against 
small coastwise ports, though lucrative, had no 
military value beyond shaking the morale of the 
population. The objective of this larger operation 
was undecided. Either Baltimore or Washington 
was tempting. But first the British had to dispose 
of the annoying gunboat flotilla of Commodore 
Joshua Barney, who had made his name mightily 
respected as a seaman of the Revolution and who 
had never been known to shake in his shoes at sight 
of a dozen British ensigns. He had found shelter 
for his armed scows, for they were no more than 
this, in the Patuxent River, but as he could not 
hope to defend them against a combined attack by 
British ships and troops he wisely blew them up. 
This turn of affairs left a fine British army all 
landed and with nothing else to do than promenade 
through a pleasant region with nobody to interfere. 
The generals and admirals discussed the matter 
and decided to saunter on to Washington instead 
of to Baltimore. In the heat of August the British 
regiments tramped along the highways, frequently 
halting to rest in the shade, until they were within 
ten miles of the capital of the nation. There they 
found the American outposts in a strong position 


190 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


on high ground, but these tarried not, and the in- 
vaders sauntered on another mile before making 
camp for the night. It is difficult to regard the 
capture of Washington with the seriousness which 
that lamentable episode deserves. The city was 
greatly surprised to learn that the enemy actually 
intended a discourtesy so gross, and the Govern- 
ment was pained beyond expression. But beyond 
this display of emotion nothing was done. The 
war was now two years old but no steps whatever 
had been taken to defend Washington, although 
there was no room for doubt that a British naval 
force could ascend the river whenever it pleased. 

The disagreeable tidings that fifty of the enemy’s 
ships had anchored off the Potomac, however, re- 
minded the President and his advisers that not a 
single ditch or rampart had been even planned, 
that no troops were at hand, that it was rather late 
for advice which seemed to be the only ammuni- 
tion that was plentiful. Quite harmoniously, the 
soldier in command was General Winder who could 
not lose his head, even in this dire emergency, 
because he had none tolose. His record for inepti- 
tude on the fighting front had, no doubt, recom- 
mended him for this place. He ran about Wash- 
ington, ordering the construction of defenses which 


PEACE WITH HONOR 191 


there was no time to build, listening to a million 
frenzied suggestions, holding all manner of con- 
sultations, and imploring the Governors of Penn- 
sylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to send militia. 

The British army was less than five thousand 
strong. To oppose them General Winder hastily 
scrambled together between five and six thousand 
men, mostly militia with a sprinkling of regulars 
and four hundred sailors from Barney’s flotilla. 
During the night before the alleged battle the camp 
was a scene of such confusion as may be imagined 
while futile councils of war were held. The troops 
when reviewed by President Madison realized Jef- 
ferson’s ideal of a citizen soldiery, unskilled but 
strong in their love of home, flying to arms to 
oppose an invader. General Jacob Brown and 
Winfield Scott at Lundy’s Lane, which was fought 
within the same month, could have pointed out, 
in language quite emphatic, that a large differ- 
ence existed between the raw material and the 
finished product. 

On the 24th of August the British army ad- 
vanced to Bladensburg, five miles from Washing- 
ton, where a bridge spanned the eastern branch of 
the Potomac. Here the hilly banks offered the 
Americans an excellent line of defense. The 


192 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Cabinet had gone to the Washington Navy Yard, 
by request of General Winder, to tell him what 
he ought to do, but this final conference was cut 
short by the news that the enemy was in motion. 
The American forces were still mobilizing in hel- 
ter-skelter fashion, and there was a wild race to the 
scene of action by militiamen, volunteers, unat- 
tached regulars, sailors, generals, citizens at large, 
Cabinet members, and President Madison himself. 

Some Maryland militia hastily joined the Balti- 
more troops on the ridge behind the village of 
Bladensburg, but part of General Winder’s own 
forces were still on the march and had not yet been 
assigned positions when the advance column of 
British light infantry were seen to rush down the 
slope across the river and charge straight for the 
bridge. They bothered not to seek a ford or to 
turn a flank but made straight for the American 
center. It was here that Winder’s artillery and his 
steadiest regiments were placed and they offered 
a stiff resistance, ripping up the British vanguard 
with grapeshot and mowing men down right and 
left. But these hardened British campaigners had 
seen many worse days than this on the bloody 
fields of Spain, and they pushed forward, closing 
the gaps in their ranks, until they had crossed the 


PEACE WITH HONOR 193 


bridge and could find a brief respite under cover 
of the trees which lined the stream. Advancing 
again, they ingeniously discharged flights of rock- 
ets and with these novel missiles they not only dis- 
organized the militia in front of them but also 
stampeded the battery mules. Most of the Ameri- 
can army promptly followed the mules and en- 
deavored to set a new record for a foot race from 
Bladensburg to Washington. The Cabinet mem- 
bers and other dignified spectators were swept 
along in the rout. 

Commodore Joshua Barney and his four hundred 
weather-beaten bluejackets declined to join this 
speed contest. They were used to rolling decks 
and had no aptitude for sprinting, besides which 
they held the simple-minded notion that their duty 
was to fight. Up to this time they had been held 
back by orders and now arrived just as the Ameri- 
ean lines broke in wild confusion. With them 
were five guns which they dragged into position 
across the main highway and speedily unlimbered. 
The British were hastening to overtake the flee- 
ing enemy when they encountered this awkward 
obstacle. Three times they charged Barney’s bat- 
tery and were three times repulsed by sailors and 
marines who fought them with muskets, cutlasses, 

13 


194 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


and handspikes, and who served those five guns 
with an efficiency which would have pleased Isaac 
Hull or Bainbridge. 

Unwilling to pay the price of direct attack, the 
British General Ross wisely ordered his infantry 
to surround Barney’s stubborn contingent. The 
American troops who were presumed to support 
and protect this naval battery failed to hold 
their ground and melted into the mob which was 
swirling toward Washington. The sailors, though 
abandoned, continued to fight until the British 
were firing into them from the rear and from both 
flanks. Barney fell wounded and some of his 
gunners were bayoneted with lighted fuses in 
their hands. Snarling, undaunted, the sailors 
broke through the cordon and saved themselves, 
the last to leave a battlefield upon which not 
one American soldier was visible. They had used 
their ammunition to the end and they faced five 
thousand British veterans; wherefore they had 
done what the navy expected of them. On a 
day so shameful that no self-respecting Ameri- 
can can read of it without blushing they had 
enacted the one redeeming episode. Commodore 
Barney described this action in a manner blunt 
and unadorned: 


PEACE WITH HONOR _195 


The engagement continued, the enemy advancing 
and our own army retreating before them, apparently 
in much disorder. At length the enemy made his 
appearance on the main road, in force, in front of my 
battery, and on seeing us madea halt. I reserved our 
fire. In a few minutes the enemy again advanced, 
when I ordered an eighteen-pounder to be fired, which 
completely cleared the road; shortly after, a second 
and a third attempt was made by the enemy to come 
forward but all were destroyed. They then crossed 
into an open field and attempted to flank our right. 
He was met there by three twelve-pounders, the ma- 
rines under Captain Miller, and my men acting as 
infantry, and again was totally cut up. By this time 
not a vestige of the American army remained, except 
a body of five or six hundred posted on a height on my 
right, from which I expected much support from their 
fine situation. 


Barney was made a prisoner, although his men 
stood by him until he ordered them to retreat. 
Loss of blood had made him too weak to be carried 
from the field. General Ross and Admiral Cock- 
burn saw to it personally that he was well cared for 
and paid him the greatest respect and courtesy. 
As for the other British officers, they, too, were 
sportsmen who admired a brave man, even in the 
enemy's uniform, and Barney reported that they 
treated him “‘like a brother.” 

The American army had scampered to Wash- 


196 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


ington with a total loss of ten killed and forty 
wounded among the five thousand men who had 
been assembled at Bladensburg to protect and save 
the capital. The British tried to pursue but the 
afternoon heat was blistering and the rapid pace 
set by the American forces proved so fatiguing to 
the invaders that many of them were bowled over 
by sunstroke. To permit their men to run them- 
selves to death did not appear sensible to the Brit- 
ish commanders, and they therefore sat down to 
gain their breath before the final promenade to 
Washington in the cool of the evening. They 
found a helpless, almost deserted city from which 
the Government had fled and the army had 
vanished. 

The march had been orderly, with a proper re- 
gard for the peaceful inhabitants, but now Ross 
and Cockburn carried out their orders to plunder 
and burn. At the head of their troops they rode 
to the Capitol, fired a volley through the windows, 
and set fire to the building. Two hundred men 
then sought the President’s mansion, ransacked 
the rooms, and left it in flames. Next day they 
burned the official buildings and several dwellings 
and, content with the mischief thus wrought, aban- 
doned the forlorn city and returned to camp at 


PEACE WITH HONOR 197 


Bladensburg. But more vexation for the Ameri- 
cans was to follow, for a British fleet was working 
its way up the Potomac to anchor off Alexandria. 
Here there was the same frightened submission, 
with the people asking for terms and yielding up a 
hundred thousand dollars’ worth of flour, tobacco, 
naval stores, and shipping. 

The British squadron then returned to Chesa- 
peake Bay and joined the main fleet which was pre- 
paring to attack Baltimore. The army of General 
Ross was recalled to the transports and was set 
ashore at the mouth of the Patapsco River while 
the ships sailed up to bombard Fort McHenry, 
where the star-spangled banner waved. To defend 
Baltimore by land there had béen assembled more 
than thirteen thousand troops under command of 
General Samuel Smith. The tragical farce of Blad- 
ensburg, however, had taught him no lesson, and 
to oppose the five thousand toughened regulars of 
General Ross he sent out only three thousand green 
militia most of whom had never been under fire. 
They put up a wonderfully good fight and deserved 
praise for it, but wretched leadership left them 
drawn up in an open field, with both flanks un- 
protected, and they were soon driven back. Next 
morning — the 13th of September — the British 


198 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


advanced but found the roads so blocked by fallen 
trees and entanglements that progress was slow 
and laborious. The intrenchments which crowned 
the hills of Baltimore appeared so formidable that 
the British decided to await action by the fleet ad 
attempt a night assault. 

General Ross was killed during the advance, and 
this loss caused confusion of council. The heavy 
ships were unable to lie within effective range of the 
forts because of shoal water and a barrier of sunken 
hulks, and Fort McHenry was almost undamaged 
by the bombardment of the lighter craft. All 
through the night a determined fire was returned 
by the American garrison of a thousand men, and, 
although the British fleet suffered little, Vice-Ad- 
miral Cochrane concluded that a sea attack was a 
hopeless enterprise. He so notified the army, which 
thereupon retreated to the transports, and the fleet 
sailed down Chesapeake Bay, leaving Baltimore 
free and unscathed. 

Among those who watched Fort McHenry by 
the glare of artillery fire through this anxious night 
was a young lawyer from Washington, Francis 
Scott Key, who had been detained by the British 
fleet down the bay while endeavoring to effect 
an exchange of prisoners. He had a turn for - 


PEACE WITH HONOR 199 


verse-making. Most of his poems were mediocre, 
but the sight of the Stars and Stripes still fluttering 
in the early morning breeze inspired him to write 
certain deathless stanzas which, when fitted to the 
old tune of Anacreon in Heaven, his country ac- 
cepted as its national anthem. In this exalted 
moment it was vouchsafed him to sound a trumpet 
call, clear and far-echoing, as did Rouget de Lisle 
when, with soul aflame, he wrote the Marseillaise 
for France. If it was the destiny of the War of 
1812 to weld the nation as a union, the spirit of 
the consummation was expressed for all time in 
the lines which a hundred million of free people 
sing today: 


O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light, 
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last 
gleaming 
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the 
perilous fight, 
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly 
streaming? 


The luckless endeavor to capture Baltimore by 
sea and land was the last British expedition that 
alarmed the Atlantic coast. The hostile army 
and naval forces withdrew to Jamaica, from which 


200 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


base were planned and undertaken the Louisiana 
campaign and the battle of New Orleans. 


The brilliant leadership and operations of An- 
drew Jackson were so detached and remote from 
all other activities that he may be said to have 
fought a private war of his own. It had seemed 
clear to Madison that, as a military precaution, the 
control of West Florida should be wrenched from 
Spain, whose neutrality was dubious and whose 
Gulf territory was the rendezvous of privateers, 
pirates, and other lawless gentry, besides offering 
convenient opportunity for British invasion by sea. 
As early as the autumn of 1812 troops were col- — 
lected to seize and hold this region for the duration 
of the war. The people of the Mississippi Valley 
welcomed the adventure with enthusiasm. It was 
to be aimed against a European power presumably 
friendly, but the sheer love of conquest and old 
grudges to settle were motives which brushed argu- 
ment aside. Andrew Jackson was the major gen- 
eral of the Tennessee militia, and so many hardy 
volunteers flocked to follow him that he had to sift 
them out, mustering in at Nashville two thousand 
of whom he said: “They are the choicest of our 
citizens. They go at our call to do the will of 


PEACE WITH HONOR - 201 


Government. No constitutional scruples trouble 
them. Nay, they will rejoice at the opportunity 
“of placing the American eagle on the ramparts of 
Pensacola, Mobile, and Fort St. Augustine.” 
Where the fiery Andrew Jackson led, there was 
neither delay nor hesitation. At once he sent his 
backwoods infantry down river in boats, while the 
mounted men rode overland. Four weeks later the 
information overtook him at Natchez that Congress 
had refused to sanction the expedition. When the 
Secretary of War curtly told him that his corps was 
“dismissed from public service,’’ Andrew Jackson 
in a furious temper ignored the order and marched 
his men back to Nashville instead of disbanding 
them. He was not long idle, however, for the pow- 
erful confederacy of the Creek Indians had been 
aroused by a visit of the great Tecumseh, and the 
drums of the war dance were sounding in sym- 
pathy with the tribes of the Canadian frontier. In 
Georgia and Alabama the painted prophets and 
medicine men were spreading tales of Indian vic- 
tories over the white men at the river Raisin and 
Detroit. British officials, moreover, got wind of 
a threatened uprising in the South and secretly 
encouraged it. 
The Alabama settlers took alarm and left their 


202 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


log houses and clearings to seek shelter in the near- 
est blockhouses and stockades. One of these be- 
longed to Samuel Mims, a half-breed farmer, who 
had prudently fortified his farm on a bend of the 
Alabama River. A square stockade enclosed an 
acre of ground around his house and to this refuge 
hastened several hundred pioneers and their fami- 
lies, with their negro slaves, and a few officers and 
soldiers. Here they were surprised and massacred 
by a thousand naked Indians who called themselves 
Red Sticks because of the wands carried by their 
fanatical prophets. Two hundred and fifty scalps 
were carried away on poles, and when troops ar- 
rived they found nothing but heaps of ashes, muti- 
lated bodies, and buzzards feeding on the carrion. 
From Fort Mims the Indians overran the coun- 
try like a frightful scourge, murdering and burn- 
ing, until a vast region was emptied of its people. 
First to respond to the pitiful calls for help was 
Tennessee, and within a few weeks twenty-five hun- 
dred infantry and a thousand cavalry were march- 
ing into Alabama, led by Andrew Jackson, who 
had not yet recovered from a wound received in - 
a brawl with Thomas H. Benton. Among Jack- 
son’s soldiers were two young men after his own 
heart, David Crockett and Samuel Houston. The 


PEACE WITH HONOR 203 


villages of the fighting Creeks, at the Hickory 
Ground, lay beyond a hundred and sixty miles of 
wilderness, but Jackson would not wait for sup- 
plies. He plunged ahead, living somehow on the 
country, until his men, beginning to break under 
the strain of starvation and other hardships, de- 
clared open mutiny. But Jackson cursed, threat- 
ened, argued them into obedience again and again. 
When such persuasions failed, he planted cannon to 
sweep their lines and told them they would have to 
pass over his dead body if they refused to go on. 

The failure of other bodies of troops to support 
his movements and a discouraged Governor of 
Tennessee could not daunt his purpose. He was 
told that the campaign had failed and that the 
struggle was useless. To this he replied that he 
would perish first and that energy and decision, 
together with the fresh troops promised him, would 
solve the crisis. Months passed, and the militia 
whose enlistments had expired went home, while 
the other broke out in renewed and more serious 
mutinies. The few regulars sent to Jackson he 
used as police to keep the militia in order. The 
court-martialing and shooting of a private had a 
beneficial effect. 

With this disgruntled, unreliable, weary force, 


204 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Jackson came, at length, to a great war camp of the 
Creek Indians at a loop of the Tallapoosa River 
called Horsehoe Bend. Here some ten hundred 
picked warriors had built defensive works which 
were worthy of the talent of a trained engineer. 
They also had as effective firearms as the white 
troops who assaulted the stronghold. Andrew 
Jackson bombarded them with two light guns, sent 
his men over the breastworks, and captured the 
breastworks in hand-to-hand fighting in which quar- 
ter was neither asked nor given. No more than a 
hundred Indians escaped alive, and dead among the 
logs and brushwood were the three famous proph- 
ets, gorgeous in war paint and feathers, who had 
preached the doctrine of exterminating the paleface. 

The name of Andrew Jackson spread far and 
wide among the hostile Indian tribes, and the 
fiercest chiefs dreaded it like a tempest. Some 
made submission, and others joined in signing a 
treaty of peace which Jackson dictated to them 
with terms as harsh as the temper of the man who 
had conquered them. 

For his distinguished services Jackson was made - 
a major general of the regular army. He was then 
ordered to Mobile, where his impetuous anger was 
aroused by the news that the British had landed at 


PEACE WITH HONOR 205 


Pensacola and had pulled down the Spanish flag. 
The splendor of this ancient seaport had passed 
away, and with it the fleets of galleons whose sail- 
- ors heard the mission bells and saw the brass guns 
gleam from the stout fortresses which in those 
earlier days guarded the rich commerce of the 
overland trade route to St. Augustine. 

Aforetime one of the storied and romantic ports 
of the Spanish Main, Pensacola now slumbered in 
unlovely decay and was no more than a village to 
which resorted the smugglers of the Caribbean, the 
pirates of the Gulf, and rascally men of all races and 
colors. The Spanish Governor still lived in the 
palace with a few slovenly troops, but he could no 
more than protest when a hundred royal marines 
came ashore from two British sloops-of-war, and 
the commander, Major Nicholls, issued a thunder- 
ous proclamation to the oppressed people of the 
American States adjoining, letting them know that 
he was ready to assist them in liberating their 
paternal soil from a faithless, imbecile Government. 
They were not to be alarmed at his approach. 
They were to range themselves under the standard 
of their forefathers or be neutral. 

Having fired this verbal blunderbuss, Major 
Nicholls sent a sloop-of-war to enlist the support of 


206 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


Jean and Pierre Lafitte, enterprising brothers who 
maintained on Barataria Bay in the Gulf, some 
forty miles south of New Orleans, a most lucrative 
resort for pirates and slave traders. There they 
defied the law and the devil, trafficking in spoils 
filched from honest merchantmen whose crews had 
walked the plank. Pierre Lafitte was a very prop- 
er figure of a pirate himself, true to the best tradi- 
tions of his calling. But withal he displayed cer- 
tain gallantry to atone for his villainies, for he 
spurned British gold and persuasions and offered 
his sword and his men to defend New Orleans as 
one faithful to the American cause. 

If it was the purpose of Nicholls to divert Jack- 
son’s attention from New Orleans which was to 
be the objective of the British expedition prepar- 
ing at Jamaica, he succeeded admirably; but in 
deciding to attack Jackson’s forces at Mobile, he 
committed a grievous error. The worthy Nicholls 
failed to realize that he had caught a Tartar in 
General Jackson — ‘“‘Old Hickory,” the sinewy 
backwoodsman who would sooner fight than eat 
and who was feared more than the enemy by his 
-ownmen. As might have been expected, the garri- 
son of one hundred and sixty soldiers who held 
Fort Bowyer, which dominated the harbor of 


PEACE WITH HONOR 207 


Mobile, solemnly swore among themselves that 
they would never surrender until the ramparts 
were demolished over their heads and no more than 
a corporal’s guard survived. This was Andrew 
Jackson’s way. 
Four British ships, with a total strength of 
seventy-eight guns, sailed into Mobile Bay on the 
15th of September and formed in line of battle, 
easily confident of smashing Fort Bowyer with its 
twenty guns, while the landing force of marines and 
Indians took position behind the sand dunes and 
awaited the signal. The affair lasted no more than 
anhour. The American gunnery overwhelmed the 
British squadron. The Hermes sloop-of-war was 
forced to cut her cable and drifted under a raking 
fire until she ran aground and was blown up. The 
Sophie withdrew after losing many of her seamen, 
and the two other ships followed her to sea after 
delaying to pick up the marines and Indians who 
merely looked on. Daybreak saw the squadron 
spreading topsails to return to Pensacola. 
Andrew Jackson was eager to return the compli- 
ment but, not having troops enough at hand to 
march on Pensacola, he had to wait and fret until 
his force was increased to four thousand men. Then 
he hurled them at the objective with an energy 


208 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


that was fairly astounding. On the 3d of Novem- 
ber he left Mobile and three days later was de- 
manding the surrender of Pensacola. The next 
morning he carried the town by storm, waited 
another day until the British had evacuated and 
blown up Fort Barrancas, six miles below the city, 
and then returned to Mobile. Sickness laid him 
low but, enfeebled as he was, he made the journey 
to New Orleans by easy stages and took command 
of such American troops as he could hastily as- 
semble to ward off the mightiest assault launched 
by Great Britain during the War of 1812. It was 
known, and the warning had been repeated from 
Washington, that the enemy intended sending a 
formidable expedition against Louisiana, but when 
Jackson arrived early in December the Legislature 
had voted no money, raised no regiments, devised 
no plan of defense, and was unprepared to make 
any resistance whatever. 

A British fleet of about fifty sail, carrying per- 
haps a thousand guns, had gathered for the task in 
hand. “The decks were crowded with trained and 
toughened troops, the divisions which had scat- 
tered the Americans at Bladensburg with a volley 
and a shout, kilted Highlanders, famous regiments 
which had earned the praise of the Iron Duke in the 


PEACE WITH HONOR 209 


Spanish Peninsula, and brawny negro detachments 
recruited in the West Indies. It was such an army 
as would have been considered fit to withstand the 
finest troops in Europe. In command was one of 
England’s most brilliant soldiers, General Sir Ed- 
ward Pakenham, of whom Wellington had said, 
“my partiality for him does not lead me astray 
when I tell you that he is one of the best we have.” 
He was the idol of his officers, who agreed that they 
had never served under a man whose good opinion 
they were so desirous of having, “‘and to fall in his 
‘ estimation would have been worse than death.” 
In brief, he was a high-minded and knightly leader 
who had seen twenty years of active service in the 
most important campaigns of Europe. 

It was Pakenham’s misfortune to be unacquaint- 
ed with the highly irregular and unconventional 
methods of warfare as practiced in America, where 
troops preferred to take shelter instead of being 
shot down while parading across open ground in 
solid columns. Improvised breastworks were to 
him a novelty, and the lesson of Bunker Hill had 
been forgotten. These splendidly organized and 
seasoned battalions of his were confident of walking 
through the Americans at New Orleans as they 
had done at Washington, or as Pakenham himself 


14 


210 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


had smashed the finest French infantry at Sala- 
manca when Wellington told him, “Ned, d’ye see 
those fellows on the hill? Throw your division 
into column; at them, and drive them to the devil.” 

Stranger than fiction was the contrast between 
the leaders and between the armies that fought this 
extraordinary battle of New Orleans when, after 
the declaration of peace, the United States won its 
one famous but belated victory on land. On the 
northern frontier such a man as Andrew Jackson 
might have changed the whole aspect of the war. 
He was a great general with the rare attribute of 
reading correctly the mind of an opponent and 
divining his course of action, endowed with an un- 
yielding temper and an iron hand, a relentless pur- 
pose, and the faculty of inspiring troops to follow, 
obey, and trust him in the last extremity. He was 
one of them, typifying their passions and preju- 
dices, their faults and their virtues, sharing their 
hardships as if he were a common private, never 
grudging them the credit in success. 

In the light of previous events it is probable that 
any other American general would have felt justi- 
fied in abandoning New Orleans without a contest. 
In the city itself were only eight hundred regulars 
newly recruited and a thousand volunteers. But 


PEACE WITH HONOR Q11 


Jackson counted on the arrival of the hard-bitted, 
Indian-fighting regiments of Tennessee who were 
toiling through the swamps with their brigadiers, 
Coffee and Carroll. The foremost of them reached 
New Orleans on the very day that the British were 
landing on the river bank. Gaunt, unshorn, un- 
tamed were these rough-and-tumble warriors who 
feared neither God nor man but were glad to fight 
and die with Andrew Jackson. In coonskin caps, 
buckskin shirts, fringed leggings, they swaggered 
into New Orleans, defiant of discipline and im- 
patient of restraint, hunting knives in their belts, 
long rifles upon their shoulders. There they drank 
with seamen as wild as themselves who served in 
the ships of Jackson’s small naval force or had 
offered to lend a hand behind the stockades, and 
with lean, long-legged Yankees from down East, 
swarthy outlaws who sailed for Pierre Lafitte, 
Portuguese and Norwegian wanderers who had de- 
serted their merchant vessels, and even Spanish 
_ adventurers from the West Indies. 

_ The British fleet disembarked its army late in 
December after the most laborious difficulties be- 
cause of the many miles of shallow bayou and toil- 
“some marsh which delayed the advance. A week 
was required to carry seven thousand men in small 


212 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


boats from the ships to the Isle aux Poix on Lake 
Borgne chosen as a landing base. Thence a bri- 
gade passed in boats up the bayou and on the 23d 
of December disembarked at a point some three 
miles from the Mississippi and then by land and 
canal pushed on to the river’s edge. Here they 
were attacked at night by Jackson with about two 
thousand troops, while a war schooner shelled the 
British left from the river. It was a weird fight. 
Squads of Grenadiers, Highlanders, Creoles, and 
Tennessee backwoodsmen blindly fought each 
other in the fog with knives, fists, bayonets, and 
musket butts. Jackson then fell back while the 
British brigade waited for more troops and artillery. 

On Christmas Day Pakenham took command 
of the forces at the front now augmented to about 
six thousand, but hesitated to attack. And well 
he might hesitate, in spite of his superior numbers, 


for Jackson had employed his time well and now’ 


lay entrenched behind a parapet, protected by a 
canal or ditch ten feet wide. With infinite exer- 


tion more guns were dragged and floated to the © 


front until eight heavy batteries were in position. 


On the morning of the 1st of January the British ; 


gunners opened fire and felt serenely certain of 
destroying the rude defenses ‘of cotton bales and 


PEACE WITH HONOR 213 


cypress logs. To their amazement the American 
artillery was served with far greater precision and 
effect by the sailors and regulars who had been 
trained under Jackson’s direction. By noon most 
of the British guns had been silenced or dismounted 
and the men killed or driven away. “Never was 
any failure more remarkable or unlooked for than 
this,” said one of the British artillery officers. 
General Pakenham, in dismay, held a council of 
war. It is stated that his own judgment was 
swayed by the autocratic Vice-Admiral Coch- 
rane who tauntingly remarked that “if the army 
could not take those mud-banks, defended by 
ragged militia, he would undertake to do it with 
two thousand sailors armed only with cutlases 
and pistols.” . 

_ Made cautious by this overwhelming artillery 
reverse, the British army remained a week in camp, 
a respite of which every hour was priceless to An- 
drew Jackson, for his mud-stained, haggard men 
were toiling with pick and shovel to complete the 
ditches and log barricades. They could hear the 
British drums and bugles echo in the gloomy cy- 
: press woods while the cannon grumbled incessantly. 
The red-coated sentries were stalked and the 
pickets were ambushed by the Indian fighters who 


214 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


spread alarm and uneasiness. Meanwhile ] 
ham was making ready with every 

to picked troops, who had charged unshaker 
through the slaughter of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz 
and San Sebastian, and who were about to justify 
once more the tribute to the British soldier: “Give 
him a plain, unconditional order —go and do thai 
— and he will do it with a cool, self-forgetting per- 
tinacity that can scarcely betoomuchadmired.” _ 
It was Pakenham’s plan to hurl a flank attack 
against the right bank of the Mississippi while he 
directed the grand assault on the east side of the 
river where Jackson’s strength was massed. To 
protect the flank, Commodore Patterson of the 
American naval force had built a water battery of 
nine guns and was supported by eight hundred 
militia. Early in the morning of the 8th of Jang 

ary twelve hundred men in boats, under the Britis 
Colonel Thornton, set out to take this west 
as the opening maneuver of the battle. Thei 
errand was delayed, although later in the day they 

succeeded in defeating the militia and capturir 
the naval guns. This minor victory, however, w 
too late to save Pakenham’s army which had been 
cut to pieces in the frontal assault. 7" 

Jackson had arranged his main body of 


| 


4 


~~. om 


PEACE WITH HONOR 215 


"long the inner edge of the small canal extending 
- from a levee to a tangled swamp. The legendary 
cotton bales had been blown up or set on fire dur- 
_ ing the artillery bombardment and protection was 
furnished only by a raw, unfinished parapet of 
_ earth and a double row of log breastworks with red 
day tamped betweenthem. It was a motley army 
| that Jackson led. Next to the levee were posted 
_ asmall regiment of regular infantry, a company of 
| New Orleans Rifles, 2 squad of dragoons who were 
handling a howitzer, and a battalion of Creoles in 
' bright uniforms. The line was extended by the 
| freebooters of Pierre Lafitte, their heads bound 
| with crimson kerchiefs, a group of American blue- 
_ jackets, a battalion of blacks from San Domingo, a 
few grizzled old French soldiers serving a brass gun, 
' long rows of tanned, saturnine Tennesseans, more 
| regulars with a culverin, and rank upon rank of 
_ homespun hunting shirts and long rifles, John Adair 
and his savage Kentuckians, and, knee-deep in the 
| swamp, the frontiersmen who followed General - 
' Coffee to death or glory. 

| A spirit of reckless elation pervaded this bizarre 
and terrible little army, although it was well aware 
| that during two and a half years almost every other 
i force had been defeated by an enemy far 


216 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


less formidable. The anxious faces were those of 
the men of Louisiana who fought for hearth and 
home, with their backs to the wall. Many a brutal 
tale had they heard of these war-hardened British 
veterans whose excesses in Portugal were notorious 
and who had laid waste the harmless hamlets of 
Maryland. All night Andrew Jackson’s defenders 
stood on the qui vive until the morning mist of 
the 8th of January was dispelled and the sunlight 
flashed on the solid ranks of British hapnerin no 
more than four hundred yards away. 

At the signal rocket the enemy swept forward 
toward the canal, with companies of British sappers 
bearing scaling ladders and fascines of sugar cane. 
They moved with stolid unconcern, but the Ameri- 
can cannon burst forth and slew them until the 
ditch ran red with blood. With cheers the invin- 
cible British infantry tossed aside its heavy knap- 
sacks, scrambled over the ditch, and broke into a 
run to reach the earthworks along which flamed 
the sparse line of American rifles. Against such 
marksmen as these there was to be no work vt 
the bayonet, for the assaulting column literally fell 
as falls the grass under the keen scythe. The sur 
vivors retired, however, only to join a fresh at 
which was rallied and led by Pakenham himself. 


— 


ee eee 


PEACE WITH HONOR 217 


Be died with his men, but once more British 
_ pluck attempted the impossible, and the Highland 
brigade was chosen to lead this forlorn hope. That 
night the pipers wailed Lochaber no more for the 
mangled dead of the MacGregors, the MacLeans, 
and the MacDonalds who lay in windrows with 
their faces to the foe. This was no Bladensburg 
| holiday, and the despised Americans were paying 
off many an old score. Two thousand of the 
flower of Britain’s armies were killed or wounded 
in the few minutes during which the two assaults 
were so rashly attempted in parade formation. 
- Coolly, as though at a prize turkey shoot on a 
tavern green, the American riflemen fired into 
these masses of doomed men, and every bullet 
found its billet. 

_ On the right of the line a gallant British on- 
slaught led by Colonel Rennie swept over a re- 
doubt and the American defenders died to a man. 
_ But the British wave was halted and rolled back by 
a tempest of bullets from the line beyond, and the 
broken remnant joined the general retreat which 
_ was sounded by the British trumpeters. An armis- 
_ tice was granted next day and in shallow trenches 
_ the dead were buried, row on row, while the muffled 
drums rolled in honor of three generals, seven 


218 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


colonels, and seventy-five other officers who had . 
died with their men. Behind the log walls and 
earthworks loafed the unkempt, hilarious heroes 
of whom only seventy-one had been killed or hurt, 
and no more than thirteen of these in the grand as- 
sault which Pakenham had led. “Old Hickory” 
had told them that they could lick their weight in 
wildcats, and they were ready to agree with him. 
Magnificent but useless, after all, excepting as a 
proud heritage for later generations and a vindica- 
tion of American valor against odds, was this’ 
battle of New Orleans which was fought while the 
Salem ship, Astrea, Captain John Derby, was driv- 
ing home to the westward with the news that a 
treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. Witha 
sense of mutual relief the United States and Eng- 
land had concluded a war in which neither nation 
had definitely achieved its aims. The treaty failed 
to mention such vital issues as the impressment of 
seamen and the injury to commerce by means of 
paper blockades, while on the other hand England 
relinquished its conquest of the Maine coast and its 
claim to military domination of the Great Lakes. 
English statesmen were heartily tired of a war in 
which they could see neither profit nor glory, and : 
even the Duke of Wellington had announced it as_ 


PEACE WITH HONOR 219 


his opinion “that no military advantage can be 
expected if the war goes on, and I would have great 
reluctance in undertaking the command unless we 
made a serious effort first to obtain peace with- 
out insisting upon keeping any part of our con- 
quests.” The reverses of first-class British armies 

at Plattsburg, Baltimore, and New Orleans had 
been a bitter blow to English pride. Moreover, 
British commerce on the seas had been largely 
_ destroyed by a host of Yankee privateers, and the 
common people in England were suffering from 
| scarcity of food and raw materials and from high 
prices to a degree comparable with the distress in- 
flicted by the German submarine campaign a cen- 
tury later. And although the terms of peace were 
unsatisfactory to many Americans, it was implied 
and understood that the flag and the nation had 
won a respect and recognition which should pre- 


_ vent a recurrence of such wrongs as had caused the 
War of 1812. One of the Peace Commissioners, 
Albert Gallatin, a man of large experience, un- 
questioned patriotism, and lucid intelligence, set it 
down as his deliberate verdict: 


ee 


i 
| The war has been productive of evil and of good, but 
I think the good preponderates. Independent of the 
‘loss of lives, and of the property of individuals, the 


220 THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA 


war has laid the foundation of permanent taxes and 
military establishments which the Republicans had 
deemed unfavorable to the happiness and free institu- 
tions of our country. But under our former system 
we were becoming too selfish, too much attached ex- 
clusively to the acquisition of wealth, above all, too 
much confined in our political feelings to local and 
state objects. The war has renewed and reinstated 
the national feeling and character which the Revolu- 
tion had given, and which were daily lessening. The 
people have now more general objects of attachment, 
with which their pride and political opinions are con- 
nected. They are more Americans; they feel and act 
more as a nation; and I hope that the permanency of 
the Union is thereby better secured. 


After a hundred years, during which this peace 
was unbroken, a commander of the American navy, 
speaking at a banquet in the ancient Guildhall of 
London, was bold enough to predict: “If the time 
ever comes when the British Empire is seriously 
menaced by an external enemy, it is my opinion 
that you may count upon every man, every dollar, 
and every drop of blood of your kindred across’ 
the sea.” : 

The prediction came true in 1917, and tradi- 
tional enmities were extinguished in the crusade 
against a mutual and detestable foe. The candid 
naval officer became Vice-Admiral William S. Sims, 


PEACE WITH HONOR 221 


eommanding all the American ships and sailors in 
European waters, where the Stars and Stripes and 
the British ensign flew side by side, and the squad- 
rons toiled and dared together in the finest spirit 
of admiration and respect. Out from Queenstown 
sailed an American destroyer flotilla operated by : 
a stern, inflexible British admiral who was never 
known to waste acompliment. At the end of the 


first year’s service he said to the officers of these 
hard-driven vessels: 


I wish to express my deep gratitude to the United 
States officers and ratings for the skill, energy, and un- 
failing good nature which they have all so consistently 
shown and which qualities have so materially assisted 
in the war by enabling ships of the Allied Powers to 
cross the ocean in comparative freedom. 

To command you is an honor, to work with you is a 
pleasure, to know you is to know the finest traits of the 
Anglo-Saxon race. 


The United States waged a just war in 1812 and 
vindicated the principles for which she fought, but 
as long as the poppies blow in Flanders fields it is 
the clear duty, and it should be the abiding pleas- 
ure, of her people to remember, not those far-off 
days as foemen, but these latter days as comrades 
in arms. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 


Or the scores of books that have been written about 
the War of 1812, many deal with particular phases, 
events, or personalities, and most of them are biased 
by partisan feeling. This has been unfortunately true 
of the textbooks written for American schools, which, 
by ignoring defeats and blunders, have missed the 
opportunity to teach the lessons of experience. By 
all odds the best, the fairest, and the most complete 
narrative of the war as written by an American his- 
torian is the monumental work of Henry Adams, 
History of the United States of America, 9 vols. (1889- 
91). The result of years of scholarly research, it is also 
most excellent reading. 

Captain Mahan’s Sea Power in its Relation to the 
War of 1812, 2 vols. (1905), is, of course, the final word 
concerning the naval events, but he also describes with 
keen analysis the progress of the operations on land 
and fills in the political background of cause and effect. 
Theodore Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812 (1882) is 
spirited and accurate but makes no pretensions to a 
general survey. Akin to such a briny book as this but 
more restricted in scope is The Frigate Constitution 
(1900) by Ira N. Hollis, or Rodney Macdonough’s 
Life of Commodore Thomas Macdonough (1909). Ed- 
gar Stanton Maclay in The History of the Navy, 3 vols. 

223 


224 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 


(1902), has written a most satisfactory account, which 
contains some capital chapters describing the immortal 
actions of the Yankee frigates. 

Benson J. Lossing’s The Pictorial Field Book of the 
War of 1812 (1868) has enjoyed wide popularity be- 
cause of his gossipy, entertaining quality. The author 
gathered much of his material at first hand and had the 
knack of telling a story; but he is not very trustworthy. 

As a solemn warning, the disasters of the American 
armies have been employed by several military experts. 
The ablest of these was Bvt. Major General Emory Up- 
ton, whose invaluable treatise, The Military Policy of the 
United States (1904), was pigeonholed in manuscript by 
the War Department and allowed to gather dust for 
many years. He discusses in detail the misfortunes of 
1812 as conclusive proof that the national defense can- 
not be entrusted to raw militia and untrained officers. 
Of a similar trend but much more recent are Frederic 
L. Huidekoper’s The Military Unpreparedness of the 
United States (1915) and Major General Leonard Wood’s 
Our Military History; Its Facts and Fallacies (1916). 

Of the British historians, William James undertook 
the most diligent account of them all, calling it A Full 
and Correct Account of the Military Occurrences of the 
Late War between Great Britain and the United States of 
America, 2 vols. (1818). It is irritating reading for an 
American because of an enmity so bitter that facts are 
willfully distorted and glaring inaccuracies are accepted 
as truth. As a naval historian James undertook to 
explain away the American victories in single-ship ac- 
tions, a difficult task in which he acquitted himself 
with poor grace. Theodore Roosevelt is at his best 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 225 


when he chastises James for his venomous hatred of 
all things American. 

To the English mind the War of 1812 was only an 
episode in the mighty and prolonged struggle against 
Napoleon, and therefore it finds but cursory treat- 
ment in the standard English histories. To Canada, 
however, the conflict was intimate and vital, and the 
narratives written from this point of view are sounder 
and of more moment than those produced across the 
water. The Canadian War of 1812 (1906), published 
almost a century after the event, is the work of an 
Englishman, Sir Charles P. Lucas, whose lifelong service 
in the Colonial Office and whose thorough acquaintance 
with Canadian history have both been turned to the 
best account. Among the Canadian authors in this field 
are Colonel Ernest A. Cruikshank and James Hannay. 
To Colonel Cruikshank falls the greater credit as a pio- 
neer with his Documentary History of the Campaign 
upon the Niagara Frontier, 8 vois. (1896—). Hannay’s 
How Canada Was Held for the Empire; The Story of 
the War of 1812 (1905) displays careful study but is 
marred by the controversial and one-sided attitude 
which this war inspired on both sides of the border. 

Colonel William Wood has avoided this flaw in his 
War with the United States (1915) which was published 
as a volume of the Chronicles of Canada series. As 
a compact and scholarly survey, this little book is 
recommended to Americans who comprehend that 
there are two sides to every question. The Canadians 
fought stubbornly and successfully to defend their coun- 
try against invasion in a war whose slogan “ Free Trade 


and Sailors’ Rights” was no direct concern of theirs. 
15 


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INDEX 


Adair, John, 215 

Adams, Henry, quoted, 20, 
117 

Adams (ship), 141 

Alabama, Indians aroused in, 
201 

Alabama raids compared with 
those of Essez, 154 

Albany, militia at Sackett’s 
Harbor from, 77 

Alexandria, British fleet at, 
197 

Allen, Captain W. H., 142, 148 

Amherstburg, Canadian post, 
11; Hull plans assault, 11, 
14, 16; Brock at, 17; defeat 
of British, 21, 42; Harrison 
against, 24, 25; Procter com- 
mands, 26; British advance 
from, 27 

Anderson, James, of the Essez, 
162 

Annapolis, British fleet at, 187 

Argus (brig), 94; and the Peli- 
can, 142-44 

Ariel (brig), 57, 62 

Armstrong, John, Secretary of 
War, 37, 175; plans offensive, 
72, 80, 84; and Wilkinson, 
81-82; orders winter quar- 
ters, 82 

Army, in 1812, 5-8; state con- 
trol, 6-8; incapable officers, 
10-11; at Niagara, 14-15; 
Hull’s forces, 15; mutiny, 
17; failure to supply, 24; 
forces under Winchester, 25; 
at New Orleans, 210-11 


Astrea (ship), 218 
Avon (British brig), fight with 
Wasp, 146-47 


Bainbridge, Captain William, 
90, 95, 117, 121, 127, 136— 
137, 188 

Baltimore, British fleet at, 
187; attack on, 197-99, 219 

Bangor (Me.), British land at, 
187 

Barclay, Captain R. H., Brit- 
ish officer, 52, 53, 54, 56, 60, 
61 

Barney, Commodore Joshua, 
92, 189, 193, 194; account of 
battle of Bladensburg, 195 

Barrancas, Fort, 208 

Barron, Commodore James, 91 

Belfast (Me.), British at, 187 

Belvidera (British frigate), 96; 
fight with President, 94-95 

Benton, T. H., and Jackson, 
202 

Biddle, Lieutenant James, on 
the Wasp, 111-12 

Biddle, Captain Nicholas, 92 

Black Rock, navy yard at, 39, 
48; Elliott at, 49; invasion of 
Canada from, 70; Indians 
against, 88 

Bladensburg, battle, 191-96 

Blakely, Captain Johnston, 
137, 144, 145, 146, 147 

Blockade, 124-25, 148, 185 

Blyth, Captain Samuel, 140 

Boerstler, Colonel, 76 


227 


228 


Bonne Citoyenne (British sloop- 
of-war), 126 

Bowyer, Fort, 206, 207 

Boxer, duel with Enterprise, 
139-40 

Boyd, General J. P., 74, 76, 83 

Brewster (Mass.), war levy, 
188 

Brock, Major General Isaac, 
British commander, 12-18, 
14; against Hull, 15, 17; 
Hull surrenders Detroit to, 
18-19; on Elliott’s victory, 
40; on Niagara River, 65; 
killed, 66 

Broke, Captain P. V., of the 
Shannon, 96, 128-29, 130, 
134, 138-39 

Brown, General Jacob, at 
Sackett’s Harbor, 77, 78, 79; 
at Chrystler’s Farm, 82-83; 
Niagara campaign, 167, 168, 
169, 170; at Lundy’s Lane, 
171-72, 191 

Budd, George, second lieuten- 
ant on Chesapeake, 134 

Buffalo, Elliott at, 38; diffi- 
culty of taking supplies to, 
47; American regulars sent 
to, 65; base of operations, 
70, 72; Indians against, 88 

Burrows, Captain William, of 
the Enterprise, 139 


Cabinet advises General Win- 
der, 192 

Caledonia (British brig), 38- 
39; Elliott captures, 39; in 
American squadron, 49-50, 
56 


Canada, “On to Canada!” 
slogan of frontiersmen, 4; 
vulnerable point in War of 
1812, 9, 10; population and 
extent, 10; plans for inva- 
sion of, 138-14; Hull aban- 
dons invasion of, 16; Niagara 
campaign, 64 et seq., 167-77 

Canning, George, British Secre- 


INDEX 


tary of State for Foreign 
Affairs, 92 

Carden, Captain J. S., of the 
Macedonian, 114, 115, 116 

Cass, Colonel Lewis, 18 

Castine, British land at, 187 

Champlain, Lake, Dearborn on, 
71; Hampton in command, 
80, 81; Macdonough’s vic- 
tory, 166 et seq 

Chad Geen John, 74, 


Chataiaatd River, Hampton 
on, 84, 85 

Chauncey, Captain Isaac, 
leads sailors from New York 
to Buffalo, $39; in command 
of naval forces on Lakes 
Erie and Ontario, 47, 48; 
extreme caution, 49, 55, 56, 
170-71; on Lake Ontario, 
49, 50, 63; and Perry, 50-51, 
55, 56; and Niagara cam- 
paign, 72, 73, 74, 77, 82, 
170-71 

Cherub (British sloop-of-war), 
157, 159, 160, 161 

Chesapeake (frigate), and Leo- 
pard, 91; Lawrence on, 96, 
127-28; defeated by Shan- 
non, 128-39; Allen on, 142 

Chesapeake Bay, blockade of, 
185; Cockburn in, 186; Brit- 
ish army comes to, 189; Brit- 
ish fleet in, 197 

Chippawa, Brock’s forces at, 
65, 67; battle, 168-70 

Chrystler’s Farm, battle, 83 

Chub (British schooner), 180 

Clay, Brigadier General Green, 
31 


Clay, Henry, on conquest of 
Canada, 9 

Cleveland, MHarrison’s head- 
quarters at, 33 

Cockburn, Rear Admiral 
George, 186, 195, 196 

Cockrane, Vice Admiral Alex- 
ander, 198, 218 


INDEX 


Cod, Cape, British raids on, 
188 


Coffee, General John, 211, 215 

Confiance (British frigate), 179, 
180 

Congress, declares war on 
Great Britain (1812), 4; 
and the navy, 90; votes prize 
money for Constitution, 107; 
prize money for Wasp, 113; 
and maritime trouble with 
France, 152; refuses to sanc- 
tion Jackson’s expedition, 
201 

Congress (frigate), 94, 141 

Connecticut, attitude toward 
War of 1812, 7 

Constellation (frigate), 92, 141, 
187 

Constitution (frigate), 2, 125; 
Hull and, 95, 116, 128; now 
in Boston Navy Yard, 95- 
96; encounter with British 
squadron, 96-99; and Guer- 
riére, 100-07, 108, 122-23; 
**Old Ironsides,’’ 101; under 
Bainbridge, 116-17; health 
conditions on, 117-18; en- 
counter with Java, 118-21, 
123-24, 154; Lawrence and, 

126; influence, 139; in 1813, 
‘141; gains open sea in 1814, 
1147 


Creek Indians, 201 

Creighton, Captain J. O., 137 

Crockett, David, 202 - 

Croghan, Major George, at 
Fort Stephenson, 34-35, 36, 
38, 46 

Crowninshield, Captain George, 
136 

Cyane (British frigate), 147 


Dacres, Captain John, of the 
Guerriére, 100, 101, 102, 103, 
104 

Dayton (O.), Hull takes com- 
mand at, 12 

Dearborn, Major General Hen- 


229 


ry, plans invasion of Canada, 
13, 73; commander-in-chief 
of American forces, 14; in- 
competency, 14; and Niag- 
ara campaign, 64, 65, 74-75, 
76; campaign against Mon- 
treal, 71-72; wishes to retire, 
72, 75; Armstrong and, 72; 
Brown reports battle of 
Sackett’s Harbor to, 78-79; 
retired, 80; age, 117 

Dearborn, Fort (Chicago), 
burned, 19; massacre, 20 

Decatur, Captain Stephen, 138; 
and the Philadelphia (1804), 
92; squadron commander, 94; 
on the United States, 114, 
115; on the President, 148, 
149 

Defiance, Fort, 24 

Delaware Bay, blockade of, 
185 

Derby, Captain John, 218 

Detroit, 64; first campaign 
from, 11, 14; Hull at, 12, 
13, 14, 15, 16; mutiny at, 15; 
surrender of, 17-18, 19, 20, 
22, 106-07; in British hands, 
31; Procter abandons, 42; 
Harrison returns to, 45 

Detroit (brig), taken from Hull, 
38; Elliott captures, 39-40 

Detroit (British ship), 54, 56, 
57, 60 

Downes, Lieutenant John, 155, 
156 

Downie, Captain George, Brit- 
ish officer, 178, 183 

Drummond, General Sir George 
Gordon, 172 


Eagle (brig), 180 

Eastham (Mass.), war levy, 188 

Eastport (Me.), captured, 187 

Elliott, Lieutenant J. D., 
builds fleet on Lake Erie, 
38, 48; captures Caledonia 
and Detroit, 89-40; with 
Perry, 54, 58 


230 
Endymion (British frigate), 
150 


Enter prise(brig), encounter with 
Bozer, 139-40 

Epervier (British brig), fight 
with Peacock, 144 

Erie, Barclay off, ro see also 
Presqu’ Isle 

Erie, Fort, Elliott captures 
ships near, 39; Brock at, 
65; Americans capture, 168; 
Scott and Brown occupy, 173 

Erie, Lake, Hull’s schooner 
captured on, 12; Perry on, 
21, 46 et seqg.; Harrison on 
shores of, 24, 30; Chauncey 
in command on, 47, 48 

Essex (frigate), 141, 147; last 
cruise, 151 et seq.; building 
of, 153; capture by Hillyar, 
161-65 

Essex, Junior (cruiser), 156, 
159 

Eustis, William, Secretary of 
War, 24 


Faneuil Hall, banquet for Hull 
at, 106 

Farragut, Admiral D. G., 181; 
motto, 46; cited, 59; mid- 
shipman on Essez, 161-62 

Finch (British schooner), 180 

Florida, West, Jackson and, 
200 

France, American feeling to- 
ward, 3; as maritime enemy, 
151-52, 154 

Fredericktown burned, 186 

“Free Trade and_ Sailors’ 
Rights,”’ 3, 91, 187 

Frenchtown, see Raisin River 

Frolic (British brig), encounter 
with Wasp, 108-13 


Galapagos Islands, Essex at, 
155 
Gallatin, Albert, quoted, 219- 


220 
George, Fort, British fort, 67; 


INDEX 


evacuated by British, 7 
75; retaken, 37 

Georgia, Indians aroused i in, 
201 

Georgiana_ (British whaling 
ship), Essex captures, 155; 
renamed Essex, Junior, 156 

Great Britain, and free sea, 2- 
8; Indian wars, 4; war de- 
clared on (1812), 4; and In- 
dians, 10; and Napoleon, 
124; blockading measures, 
124-25 

Great Lakes, British on, 38 

Guerriére (British frigate), 2, 
96; encounter with Constitu- 
tion, 100-07, 108, 122-23; 
celebration of capture, 116 

Hamilton, Alexander, Izard 
aide to, 175 

Hampton, General Wade, in 
campaign against Mon’ 
80, 81, 83-84, 86; and Wil- 
kinson, 80-81; cause of fail- 
ure, 86; age, 117 

Hampton, British foray on 
village of, 187 

Hapagen, Captain Jonathan, 


Hace General W. H., cam- 
paign, 22 et seq.; report to 
Secretary of War, 29-30; 
Croghan and, 35; Armstrong 
on, 87-38; and Perry’s vic- 
tory, 41, 63; resumes cam- 
paign, 42; becomes President 
of United States, 45 

Havre de Grace burned, 186 

Hazen, Benjamin, of the Essez, 


162 
Henry (brig), 136, 187 
team (British sloop-of-war), 
Hillyar, Captain James, British 
officer, 157, 158, 159-60, 161, 
164-65 
Hornet (sloop-of-war), 48, 94; 
Lawrence on, 126; and "Pea- 


INDEX 


Hornet—Continued 
cock, 127; in South American 
waters, 154 

Horseshoe Bend, battle, 204 

Houston, Samuel, 202 

Hull, Captain Isaac, of the 
Constitution, 95, 128, 138; 

_ and British squadron, 96, 97, 
98, 99; and Guerriére, 101, 
102, 108, 106; and Dacres, 
104; victory celebrated, 106, 
107, 108; gives up command 
of Constitution, 116-17; at 
Lawrence’s funeral, 136 

Hull, General William, 34, 68, 
71, 88, 98; Detroit campaign, 
11 et seg.; troops, 15, 17; sur- 
render, 19; court-martial, 
19-20; Harrison and, 22; 
age, 117 


Impressment of seamen, 90 

Indian wars, enmity toward 
Great Britain because of, 4 

Indians, British and, 10, 55; 
against Americans, 16, 67, 
76; in Canadian army, 17; 
Procter and, 26; abandon 
British cause, 44; ravage 
frontier, 88; massacre at 
Fort Mims, 202 

Izard, General George, 175, 176 


Jackson, Andrew, at New Or- 
leans, 17-18, 208 et seg.; and 
Florida expedition, 200-03; 
at Horseshoe Bend, 204; at 
Pensacola, 207-08 

Jacob Jones (destroyer), 109 

Vava (British. frigate), encoun- 
ter with Constitution, 118-20, 
154 

Jefferson, Thomas, and gun- 
boats, 8-9; on conquest of 
Canada, 9-10 

Johnson, Allen, Jefferson and 
his Colleagues, cited, 2 

Johnson, Colonel R. M., 41, 
43, 44, 46 


231 


Jones, Captain Jacob, of the 
Wasp, 109, 110, 111, 113 
Jones, John Paul, cited, 59; 
American naval officers serve 
with, 92; on the Ranger, 141 


Kentucky, defends western 
border, 22; militia, 24, 31 
Key, F.S., Star-Spangled Ban- 
‘ner, 198-99 
Kingston, plan to capture, 72, 
73; Prevost embarks at, 77 


Lady Prevost (British schoon- 
er), 56 

Lafitte, Jean, 206 

Lafitte, Pierre, 206, 211, 215 

Lambert, Captain Henry, of 
the Java, 118 

porte Jack, sailor on the Wasp, 
11 


La Viaahites (French ship) 
and Constellation, 93 

Lawrence, Captain James, of 
the Chesapeake, 96, 127-28, 
129-30; on the Hornet, 126, 
127; fights Shannon, 130- 
136; death, 131, 133, 135; 
account of funeral, 136-37 

Lawrence (brig), 49, 53, 55, 56, 
57, 58 


Leopard and Chesapeake, 91, 
142 

Levant (British sloop-of-war), 
fight with Constitution, 147 

Lewis, General Morgan, 75- 


Linnet (British brig), 180 

L’Insurgente (French ship) and 
Constellation, 92 

Long Island Sound, British 
fleet in, 188 

Ludlow, Lieutenant A. C., of 
the Chesapeake, 133, 136, 137 

Lundy’s Lane, battle, 2, 171- 
173 


McArthur, Colonel, 18 
Macdonough, Commodore 


232 


Macdonough—Continued 
Thomas, on Lake Cham- 
plain, 166, 167, 171, 178, 
179-84 

Macedonian (British frigate), 
Decatur captures, 114-16, 
142; as American frigate, 141 

McHenry, Fort, 197, 198 

Mackinac, fall of, 19, 20 

Mackinaw, see Mackinac 

M’Knight, Lieutenant, S. D., 
of the Essex, 163 

Macomb, Brigadier General 
Alexander, 177 

Madison, James, and Hull, 12, 
19; reviews troops, 191; at 
battle of Bladensburg, 192; 
policy asto West Florida, 200 

Mahan, Captain A. T., quoted, 
128 


Maine, British raids, 187 

Malden (Amherstburg), 43; 
see also Amherstburg 

Massachusetts, attitude to- 
ward War of 1812, 7, 91 

Maumee Rapids, Harrison at, 
30 

Maumee River, Hull at, 12 

Meigs, Fort, massacre at, 20, 
32; built, 30; Procter be- 
sieges, 31-32, 36; Harrison 
again at, 33 

Merchant marine, 93 

Miller, Captain, at battle of 
Bladensburg, 195 

Miller, Colonel John, 17, 33 

Mims, Samuel, 202 

Mims, Fort, massacre, 202 

Mississippi Valley and inva- 
sion of Florida, 200 

Mobile, Jackson at, 204, 206- 
207, 208 

Montreal, plan of attack, 14; 
campaign against, 71, 82-87 

Moraviantown, Procter goes 
to, 42 

Morris, Lieutenant Charles, on 
the Constitution, 101, 107 

Mulcaster, Captain W. H., 83 


INDEX 


Murray, Colonel, British of- 
ficer, 87 


Napoleon, Great Britain and, 
2; offenses against American 
commerce, 3 

Navy, 8-9, 38; on Lake Erie, 46 
et seq.; on the sea, 89 et seq.; 
augmented by private sub- 
scriptions, 152; victory on 
Lake Champlain, 166 et seq. 

Nelson, Horatio, Viscount, 
quoted, 141 

New England, attitude toward 
War of 1812, 7-8; British 
raids in, 187-88 

New Orleans, battle of, 166, 
175, 208-18, 219 

New York, apprehension in, 
148 . 


Niagara, campaign planned, 
13-14; American forces at, 
14-15; campaign, 64 et seq.; 
renewal of struggle for re- 
gion of (1814), 167-77 

Niagara (brig), 49, 53, 54, 56, 
58, 59 


Niagara, Fort, 87 

Nicholls, Major Edward, 205 

Norfolk, Warren attacks, 187 

Northwest Territory regained 
for United States, 44, 63 


Ohio, Hull sends troops to, 16; 
defends western border, 22; 
mnilitia, 31 

**Old Ironsides,’”’ 101, see also 
Constitution 

Ontario, Lake, Chauncey in 
command on, 47, 48, 49, 50; 
battle at Sackett’s Harbor, 
77-79 

Orne, Captain W. B., 104 


Paine, R. D., The Old Merchant 
Marine, cited, 93 (note) — 
Pakenham, General Sir Ed- 
ward, at New Orleans, 209- 

210, 212, 213, 214, 216-17 


INDEX 


Patterson, Commodore D. T., 
at New Orleans, 214 

Peacock (British brig) and 
Hornet, 127 

Peacock (sloop-of-war), 144 

Pelican (British brig), 142 

Pennsylvania, brigade in West- 
ern campaign from, 23; 
militia at Erie, 52-53 

Pensacola, British pull down 
Spanish flag at, 204-05; 
Jackson at, 207-08 

Perry, O. H., 180-81; victory 
on Lake Erie, 21, 46 et seq., 
166; and Harrison, 41, 63; 
famous message, 41, 62 

Philadelphia (frigate), 92 

Phebe (British frigate) and 
Essex, 157-65 

Pilot, The, on destruction of 
the Java, 123-24. 

Plattsburg, Dearborn ai, 71; 
troops moved from, 74, 80; 
Izard at, 175, 176; Prevost 
at, 176, 177,178 

Plattsburg Bay, battle of, 177- 
184, 219 

Poictiers (British ship), 113 

Pomone (British frigate), 150 

Porter, Captain David, of the 
Essex, 151; raids on British 
whaling fleet, 154-56; Phebe 
and Cherub seek, 157-64; 
account of surrender of Es- 
sex, 163-64 

President (frigate), 141, 147, 
148, 149; encounters Belvi- 
dere, 94-95; Rodgers in com- 
mand of, 101; captured, 150 

Presqu’ Isle (Erie), navy yard 
at, 48; see also Erie 

Prevost, Sir George, Governor 
General of Canada, 54; 
erosses Lake Ontario, 77; 
defends Monireal, 84-85; 
goes to Plattsburg, 176, 177; 
quoted, 176-77, 178-79 

Privateers, 93 

Procter, Colonel Henry, battle 


233 


of the Raisin, 26; character, 
26; and Harrison, 30, 34, 37- 
38; at Fort Meigs, 31-32, 33; 
at Fort Stephenson, 36; 
blames Indians for defeat, 
36-37; Brock reports to, 40- 
41; and Tecumseh, 42; offi- 
cial disgrace, 45 
Put-in Bay, Perry at, 54 


Queen Charlotte (British ship), 

+ 56, 58, 60 

Queenston, attack on, 65-67; 
British at, 168, 170 

Quincy, Josiah, 91 


Raisin River, massacre at, 20, 
26-30, 36; Winchester at 
Frenchtown, 25 

Ranger (frigate), 141 

Rattlesnake (brig), 137 

Reindeer (British brig), 145 

Rennie, Colonel, British officer, 
217 

Riall, General Phineas, 168, 170 

Ripley, General E. W., 173 

Ripley, John, seaman on Essex, 


162 
Rodgers, Commodore John, 
188, 


94, 95, 101, 113-14 
Ross, General Robert, 
194; and Barney, 195; in 
Washington, 196; against 
Baltimore, 197; killed, 198 
Rush, Richard, quoted, 132 


Sackett’s Harbor, Lake On- 
tario, invasion of Canada 
planned from, 13-14; Chaun- 
cey, at, 47, 48; in Niagara 
campaign, 72, 74, 76-77; 
batile at, 77-79; campaign 
against Monireal, 80, 81; 
Brown at, 167; fleet at, 170 

St. Lawrence River, plan to 
gain control of, 72; Wilkin- 
son’s army descends, 80; 
Wilkinson abandons voyage 
down, 83-84 


234 


Salaberry, Colonel de, 85, 86 

Salem contributes Essex to 
navy, 152 

Salem Marine Society, 136 

Saratoga (flagship), 180 

Scorpion (brig), 57, 62 

Scott, Michael, Tom Cringle’s 
Log, quoted, 145 

Scott, Winfield, quoted, 5; at 
Queenston, 66; at Chippawa, 
68, 168-69; taken prisoner, 
68; in control of army, 73; 
at Fort George, 74; on Wil- 
kinson, 80; trains Brown’s 
troops, 167; at Lundy’s 
Lane, 171, 172,191; wound- 
ed, 173 

Seneca, Harrison at, 37, 38, 41 

Shannon (British frigate), en- 
counter with Constitution, 
96-99; defeats Chesapeake, 
128-39 

Shipbuilding on Lake Erie, 50 

Sims, Vice-Admiral W. S., 
220-21 

Smith, General Samuel, 197 

Smyth, Brigadier General Alex- 
ander, 65, 66, 68-69, 70-71 

Sophie (British ship), 207 

Spain and West Florida, 200 

Squaw Island, Elliott at, 38 

Stephenson, Fort, Harrison at, 
34; Croghan at, 36, 46; Proc- 
ter’s defeat, 36, 37-38 

Stewart, Captain Charles, 136, 
147 


Stonington, British bombard, 
188 
Stony Creek, battle, 75 


Tecumseh, 16, 18, $1, 32, 34, 
42; death, 44; and Creek 
Indians, 201 

Tenedos (British frigate), 150 

Thames River, Procter’s de- 
feat at, 43-44 

Thornton, Colonel Sir William, 
British officer, 214 

Ticonderoga (schooner), 180 


INDEX 


Times, London, account of 
fight of Guerriére, 122-23 
Tippecanoe campaign, 20 
Toronto, see York 
Transportation, effect of block- 
ade on, 148 ' 


United States (frigate), 94, 189; 
captures Macedonian, 114- 
116, 142; and blockade, 141 

Upper Sandusky, Harrison’s 
headquarters, 38, 34 __ 


Valparaiso, Essex at, 155, 156, 
157; Essex and Phebe at, 
158 et seq. 

Van Rensselaer, Major General 
Stephen, 64, 65, 66, 68, 71 

Vincent, General John, British 
officer, 74, 75 

Virginia, brigades from, 23 


War of 1812, a victory, 1; 
causes, 2-4; army, 5-8; 
“Mr. Madison’s War,” 8; 
navy, 8-9, 89 ef seq.; cam- 
paign in West, 11 et seq.; 
Perry and Lake Erie, 46 et 
seq.; the Northern Front, 
64 et seq.; victory on Lake 
Champlain, 166 et seg.; peace 
with honor, 185 et seq.; bibli- 
ography, 223-25 

Warren, Admiral Sir J. B., 
138, 185, 187 

Warrington, Captain Lewis, of 
the Peacock, 144 

Washington, George, on need 
of regular army, 6-7; and 
Hull, 11 

Washington, Capitol burned, 
73, 196; naval ball to cele- 
brate capture of Guerriére, 
116; British fleet causes con- 
sternation in, 187; British 
decide to attack, 189; cap- 
ture of, 166, 190-96 

Wasp (sloop-of-war), 48; en- 
counter with Frolic, 108-13; 


INDEX 


Wasp—Continued 
last cruise, 144-47; disap- 
pearance, 147 

Wellfleet (Mass.), war levy, 
188 


Whinyates, Captain Thomas, 
of the Frolic, 109, 112 

Wilkinson, James, succeeds 
Dearborn, 80; character, 80; 
Hampton and, 81, 84; and 
Armstrong, 81; campaign, 
82, 83, 84, 86, 87; age, 117 


235 


Winchester, General James, as 
a leader, 24-25; at Raisin 
River, 25, 26-27, 28 

Winder, General W. H., in 
Niagara campaign, 74, 75; 
at Washington, 190-91, 192 

Wool, Captain J. E., at Queens- 
ton, 66 


Yeo, Sir James, 49, 77 
York (Toronto), plans to cap- 
ture, 72, 78; capture, 73 


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